, who is marking 40 years post-call and 20 years as a professor of law shares the experience of his legal journey in this interview with Assistant Editor, Law and Foreign Affairs, JOSEPH ONYEKWERE.
My take has always been that legal education is rather polluted by the quality of intake from the secondary schools. As is often stated in Computer terminology “garbage in, garbage out”. The garbage from Secondary Schools is what unfortunately ends up in the law Faculties/Law School. I have argued repeatedly that our only salvation is to make Legal Education, a graduate programme.
At the bench, we had the Bello’s, Idigbe’s, Oputas, Esos, Uwais, Obaseki, Irikefes, Aniagolus etc. We were young but their reputation preceded them. To the glory of God, it has been a memorable career in the past 40 years. A career that spanned legal advocacy, teaching, research, public service and international appointments and back to legal practice is certainly laden with experience and exposure. By the special grace of God, I think I have what it takes to engage for another 20 years at the highest level.
Being a Senior Advocate indeed confers a lot of privileges, but does that extend to the position of occupying the presidency of the Nigerian Bar Association as the exclusive preserve of SANs? This is in addition to accumulated experience, legal dexterity and skilful advocacy. For Nigerian lawyers to compete favourably with our counterparts abroad, we need the requirements for the attainment of the rank of SAN to build a legal profession of international standards. As a member of the LPPC in the last five years, I unequivocally refute any allegation of nepotism, undue influence and partiality.