“So Called “Universal Suffrage” in NBA Elections breeds Indiscipline, Disrespect…. We must return to our core traditions” – Okutepa SAN
A senior Advocate of Nigeria, J S Okutepa SAN, has decried indiscipline and Lack of Respect in the Legal Profession escalated by “so called Universal Suffrage” and called for immediate return to the core traditions of the legal profession.
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The Senior Advocate made the call in a post he posted on his Facebook page and shared on Lawyers group.
“Anyone can stand up and say what he or she likes to any lawyer no matter the biological and professional age differences or even professional distinction”,…. The Senior Lawyer Lamented.
See the full Statement Below
The level of indiscipline at the Bar and in the legal profession in Nigeria now has reached such intolerable alarming proportions that if nothing is urgently done by the leadership of the Bar and the legal profession, the profession will lose its relevant and viability in Nigeria.
Indeed, in NBA, every elections since the introduction of the so-called universal suffrage had increased the level of the indiscipline I speak of in the Profession. In the name of NBA politics today anything goes. No respect. No decorum and no more integrity and honesty.
Anyone can stand up and say what he or she likes to any lawyer no matter the biological and professional age differences or even professional distinction so long as that can mislead gullible members of the profession to believe and to vote for their preferred candidates who in some cases are those promoting these indiscipline and unethical conduct. Freedom does mean and should not be a basis for indecent and indecorum language. Freedom is no license to allow ourselves to engage in conduct unbecoming. It should not be allowed to permit indecency and disrespect for ourselves.
When I joined the legal profession about 31 years ago, there was respect for elders and seniors at the Bar. The younger ones as we were then known could not in the guise of fundamental right speak to seniors rudely as we see today. Our manner of dressing now in courts and out of courts leave much to be desired. No more decency in behavior by some colleagues. It sad day to see my once noble profession in the mess it is now. Everything seems scattered and disoriented in all strata of the profession and nobody is bothered about it. I am bothered. I am worried. As young lawyers then in those days we could not and no one was permitted to attribute to seniors what they did not do or say.
To do so was sacrilegious and dishonorable and punishable misconduct. There were consequences for misconduct.
When you are to address the seniors, you select and choose your words carefully and no words uttered must carry any innuendo that is rooted in disrespect. But today there is no more respect for seniority at the Bar.
We claimed to have fundamental rights to speak what we like and anyhow we liked it. We have elevated indiscipline as freedom to do and say what is totally disrespectful to elders and seniors at the Bar.
But can we continue like this. The Bar must do something. We must return to the best traditions of respect for elders, seniors and ourselves. The divisive tendencies being promoted for primordial partisan interest for purposes of NBA elections must be nipped in the bound before it consumes the entire Association.
We are stronger and bigger in unity than in divisions within the Bar. No one should in the name of office he or she holds or aspires to occupy should be seeing using that privilege to abuse and denigrate any segment of the profession. We must return to our core traditions of respect for ourselves and elders no matter how we feel entitled to express ourselves. Let us do so with balanced decorum.
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