Chief Adeniyi Akintola, an Ibadan-based Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), yesterday deplored the unruly behavior displayed by some lawyers at the last Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference held in Lagos, describing it as a sad development in the profession.
Speaking on a radio program in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, the lawyer and gubernatorial aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), blamed the incidence on faulty leadership of the Bar, saying that the young leaders of the Bar had relegated the senior and experienced ones, believing they can do it all because of money.
He nevertheless said that he and some Yoruba elders saw what happened because of the manner the President of the Bar had been treating the elders of the profession. His words: “I feel very, very sad about what happened at the Bar Conference where booths were destroyed, phones stolen, bags stolen. We saw it coming. When that boy
Olumide Akpata came on board, we the Yoruba leaders, the “Egbe Amofin”, took a unified position that we will not dignify that boy with our presence in any of the Bar functions. Unfortunately, some of our people who took that decision along with us betrayed that trust.
“Coming from the background of a progressive, when I take a decision, even at the risk of my life, I will still stand by it. We took that decision here in Ibadan and Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) happens to be the Chairman and I happen to be his Deputy. Both of us have religiously kept to that position but unfortunately, some of our boys were against that decision because they wanted to be in one office or the other. “Again, the despicable display boiled down to poverty: poverty of ideas, poverty of knowledge, poverty of integrity and not just material poverty.
When people have poverty of ideas, they tend to have this type of self-mutilation. When I came in as a young lawyer, we held our elders in high esteem. Their words were laws. Whatever they said, we followed. But since these set of boys came up, they set out to ruin the legal profession.
At the last Body of Benchers meeting, that guy attended the meeting with us virtually and because we didn’t buy his idea, he went by issuing a release, calling four CJNs, Ostrich. He said the three former CJNs and the incumbent one sat down there playing the Ostrich, and one of the Supreme Court Justices asked us: ‘How did this one become your President?’
And we said it was these Soro Soke Boys. “At the NBA Conference, you will observe that no single Supreme Court Justice was there. No single Appeal Court Justice was there, apart from the Chief Judge of Lagos State, who went there to represent Governor Babajide Sanwo Olu.
Most of us senior lawyers were not there, except those of us who betrayed the trust and agreement we reached. You made someone who does not understand the psychology of the court your president; somebody who does not know the geography of the court.
We saw this coming and we are not surprised at what happened which was as a result of leadership lapse.