By Sylvester Udemezue
- Please see “Legal Practitioners’ Remuneration Order 2023: NBA Issues Compliance Directive to Banks on Lawyers’ Minimum Fees” (13 March 2025; published in BarristerNG). These are, in my humble opinion, mere surface-scratching measures by NBA; they’re destined for failure unless and until we first make the Order impregnable and self-executing.
2. The Legal Practitioners Remuneration Order 2023, as comprehensive and beautiful as it looks (i agree it’s), lacks in it, impregnable, self-executing provisions to make it impossible for any lawyer to flout its provisions with impunity. The Order is a dog with beautiful-looking teeth and barking, but lacks the capacity to bite.
3. Over 98 percent of lawyers in Nigeria flout the order daily, with absolute impunity. And this would continue until the right things are done: until we initiate measures to amend the Order with a view to making it impregnable. Until that is done, they waste of their precious time who think the Order can be obeyed by someone or some group sitting somewhere and dishing out “directives” especially to people who have little or nothing to do with implementation of the Order.
4. Now, come to think of it, are Nigerian Banks answerable to the NBA? Which segment of the Order empowers the NBA to dish out directives to banks or that obliges Banks to obey such directives?With due respect, this reporting is faulty; NBA issues “directive” to bank… Are the Banks servants of the NBA?
5. Meanwhile, which part of the Order gives Banks any responsibility in enforcement of the Order? Who are the people violating the Order? Banks or Lawyers? So, how would directives to Banks make lawyers to obey the Order?
6. Dear NBA, why not concentrate to think out of the box towards amending the Order to include impregnable and self-executing provisions that would make it impossible for anyone in Nigeria to disobey it with impunity. We’re ready to help in this wise. 7. An Analogy: have you not seen or heard that the laws regarding timelines in pre-election and election lawsuits in Nigeria are absolutely respected? Have you heard that anyone has disobeyed any segment of it with impunity? Have you heard anyone issuing anyone any directives on compliance with timelines in pre-election and election lawsuits in Nigeria? The reason is because the laws regulating TIMELINES in pre election and election lawsuits in Nigeria, are IMPREGNABLE and SELF-EXECUTING; do not need anyone’s help towards their enforcement. You disobey, you suffer the consequences instantly.
8. Only impregnable, self-executing laws are fitted for Nigerians because most Nigerians have the habit of never obeying laws. Impregnable, self-executing laws compel you to obey whether you are willing or not.
9. NBA, over to you, if you really want any seriousness with respect to lawyer remuneration in Nigeria, which I think is among the most teething challenges facing NBA today. I have said my own. Let those who have ears, hear!
10. On May 27, 2024 NBA President Sets Up Remuneration Committees Across Branches”. This was done through the NBA’S LEGAL PRACTITIONERS REMUNERATION COMMITTEE,, then headed by Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN. How market with the NBA branch commitrees? A statement released on blog.nigerianbar by NBA’s National Publicity Secretary (while announcing the setting up of the committees) said that “In order to enforce the provisions of this Remuneration Order for the benefit of all members, the NBA President, has set up Remuneration Committees in all the branches of the Nigerian Bar Association.” How far have the Branch Committees gone towards enforcing the provisions of the Order? Absolutely no where? It’s not that the Committees are not okay, but that the first things must be done first. Meanwhile, if we amend the Order to make it impregnable, self-executing, there would hardly be any reason for such implementation committees.
11. Now, the New NBA’s National Legal Practitioners Remuneration Committee has started with unnecessary, surface-scratching measures that will obviously lead us nowhere. When would we embrace pragmatism and sagacity in order that things would start working for us as a profession? When? Dear NBA Remuneration Committee, your directives to Banks are a total waste of time, are going to achieve nothing; it’s lawyers, not Banks, that flout the Order. Get the law amended to tie lawyers’ hands, and then, and then alone, you can begin to shout Eureka, we have done it!
12. Some people may not be comfortable with this view, which they may consider unpopular; some may even hate me for it. But it is okay. It was Beverly Sills who said: “It seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not, more important now was for me to love them”. It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice. My advise to NBA managers and all of the members of the NBA is this: never reject good advice; that’s what makes you wiser. When one sees good advice, one should not only listen to it, but should also take it. You see, one may succeed in avoiding reality, but one cannot succeed in avoiding the consequences of avoiding reality.
13. For the avoidance of doubts, my present commentary is meant both as a piece of advice and to provoke constructive discussions.
Respectfully,
§¢µð𝓮̂𝓶𝓮̂𝔃µ𝓮̂
Sylvester UDEMEZUE (Udems).
08109024556.
TheRealityMinister@Gmail.Com
(13 March 2025)