In the past few months, the entire universe have been hit with the Covid-19 Pandemic and
many countries across the globe are now on total or partial lockdown as imposed by their
governments in other to reduce the spread of Covid-19. The Federal Government of Nigeria
has imposed total lockdown in Federal Capital Territory, Lagos and Ogun States respectively.
Similarly, some state governors have imposed lockdown in their states. With the imposition
of lockdown, movement of people have been restriction and many business outfits have been
closed. However, people or organizations that are providing essential services were
exempted from this lockdown. This has adversely affect the income and standard of living of
many individuals in Nigeria and has caused hardship to many people.
In order to mitigate the travail, various individuals, corporate organizations, governments,
and professional bodies have taken different measures by distributing palliatives to people.
The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is also not lagging behind as it has also taken measures
to reach out to its young lawyers, particularly those between 1-7 years post call, whom the
Association in their good judgment believe they should be the most vulnerable.
The measures adopted by the NBA is a welcome idea and very applauding, but it is not left
out without some signs of irregularities.
One of such irregularity that has occurred in the association during this trying period has to
do with the earlier palliatives shared by the various branches. This move as beautiful as it
appears fall short of some important measures. While the consideration of the palliative was
to benefit junior lawyers, it was not in the right direction to have put the Membership of
Young Lawyers Forum or Branch Meetings Attendance List as the criteria for benefiting
from this praiseworthy measure. This I objected to owing to the fact that there are a lot of
young lawyers who are not aware that there exist an association called the Young Lawyers
Forum and eventually for short of benefiting while on the other hand regarding Branch
Meetings Attendance list, it is a well-known fact that the percentage of young lawyers who
do not attend meeting to those who do would be running between 90/10 and this is based
on the reason that majority of firms if not for morality sake are ready to make their young
lawyers sleep in the firm just to get a job done and not the will of young lawyers not to attend.
Now if this is the situation, how do we expect young lawyers to be present at meetings?
The better approach, which was eventually adopted by some other branches at a later time,
is the use of evidence of payment of practicing fees and branch dues for the year 2020 as
a condition precedent for palliative. This is supposed to be the one and only criteria.
Secondly, on the issue of the palliative currently organized by the NBA National Body, the
association haven thought of the fact that a lot of lawyers might be finding it hard to survive
as this Pandemic is taking longer than expected has rolled out yet another beautiful plan to
help its members particularly those between 1-7 years post call.
With all sense of humility, this initiative as beautiful as its appears has fall short-sighted for
taking the step of exempting young lawyers within the range of 1-7 years post call because
they work in the firms of some of learned silks and in my view and that of some others, this
move seems discriminatory.
It is my believe that before reaching such conclusion of exempting those young lawyers,
some vital questions must have been asked and same must have been thoroughly digested.
However, you may not have cast your mind to some possible questions justifying the fact
that those exempted young lawyers in SANs’ firms are also vulnerable as others. Among such
possible questions are;
- Is it all Senior Advocates of Nigeria (“SANs”) that are making money in this trying
time?
2. Is it all lawyers, working in offices of SANs are heavily paid?
3. Are our learned silks not also facing the heat at the moment?
4. Does working in a SANs firm make a lawyer better than those who work in other firms
especially in terms of payment?
5. Will those young lawyers in SANs’ firms that they were told categorically that this
period is considered as unpaid leave period not suffer?
The answers to the above questions are NO and as such the decision taken by the NBA to a
very large extend seems to be judgmental in nature.
Upon proper research done, there is the understanding that we have lawyers working in
firms of Non-Senior Advocates but they are being heavily paid than some lawyers who work
in the firm of some SANs. Sadly, the former are qualified for this palliative because they
practice in firms that have no Senior Advocate of Nigeria.
Conclusively, what should have been and should be the best step is to make the palliative
open to young lawyers within the same 1-7 years post call irrespective of which firm or
organization they belong to and it will now be left to the decision of each individual if they
want to enjoy the palliative or not.
Thank you.
Abdullahi Suleiman Esq writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
