Appoint all that qualify as Senior Advocates of Nigeria. – Aare Afe Babalola,SAN
Worried by the practice by the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee of not appointing all Legal Practitioners that qualify to be appointed to SAN-ship, the frontline legal icon, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN has recommended that appointment of Senior Advocates should follow the practice in England where the title is awarded to all that are qualified for the rank year-in-year-out.
Speaking at the commencement of the 48th Conference of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) in Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD) last week, Babalola, who noted that the title of SAN, the equivalent of QC, was imported from England where the idea of the silk came from.
According to the Founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), from time immemorial in England, no matter the number that qualify in a year, be it 25, 60 or 70, all of them would be appointed, leaving no room for backlog, wondering why Nigeria could not take a cue from that age-long and commendable practice in England.
Irked by the fact that many of those who qualify in a particular year end up not being appointed, some legal practitioners, in the last few years, have been asking for the abrogation of the SAN title.
Asked he: “But what do we have here? In the last few years, many lawyers have been asking for the abrogation of the SAN title. Their grievance is that they apply year after year and those who are qualified could be as many as 70, but at the end of the day, because the law limits the number appointable to only 15, leaving a backlog of those who are qualified”.
Regretfully, he noted that this practice has unwittingly led to the “man-know-man” syndrome where those who appoint Legal Practitioners to SAN-ship tend to favour those they know ahead of those they don’t know very well.
His words: “The question then arises: if a person is qualified, when does he become unqualified again? Perhaps one may ask those who are charged with the duty of appointing 15 out of 70 what criteria they use to jettison those who are qualified? This practice of appointing 15 out of the several that are qualified has led to ‘selection’ which may not be free from extraneous considerations”.
In his welcome address, ABUAD’s Acting Vice Chancellor, Prof. Michael Ajisafe, described Law teachers as the alter egos of the legal profession, no wonder then they have many of their products, i.e. former students, like Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Tony Blair, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and Obafemi Awolowo having to shape the course of history and governance in the contemporary world as Presidents and Prime Ministers.
Apart from having imparted legal knowledge on Nigerian and foreign law students in the Nigerian space, Ajisafe said Law teachers are teachers of natural justice, equity and good conscience, adding that many of them have taught many respectable legal luminaries, Attorneys-General, Chief Justices, Senior Advocates of Nigeria, Ministers, Governors, Ambassadors, Chief Judges and Magistrates as well as erudite and highly cerebral Law teachers.