March 06, (THEWILL) – A Senior Advocate of Nigeria and a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Wole Olanipekun, may likely not fulfill his ambition to chair the Body of Benchers, if a petition written against him to the NBA is anything to go by.
The Body of Benchers is a professional body concerned with the admission of prospective students into the Nigerian Law School. The body also regulates the call of Law School graduates to the Nigerian Bar and the regulation of the legal profession in Nigeria.
Lucius Nwosu, a fellow SAN, petitioned the NBA to restrain Olanipekun from bidding for the position. In a letter addressed to Olumide Akpata, the NBA president, Nwosu accused Olanipekun, who clocked 70 in December, of engaging in unprofessional conduct contrary to the provisions of section 3 of the Legal Practioners Act Cap L 11, which provides that a BOB member should be of the highest distinction in the legal profession.
Nwosu is therefore asking the NBA to withdraw Olanipekun’s candidacy. According to him, Olanipekun has unfortunately, over the years, progressively carried on a practice, which has culminated in his condemnation in unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court and final court of the land in the strongest of terms.
In one instance, Nwosu referred to a situation where Olanipekun sought for a review of the Supreme Court judgement on the Bayelsa State governorship election of 2019.
Olanipekun and Afe Babalola SAN, who both represented David Lyon, the Bayelsa governorship candidate and the All Progressives Congress (APC), were fined N30 million by the apex court over the application.
Nwosu claims Olanipekun defiantly refused to pay the fine, adding that his refusal is even more complicated, given the fact that the Chief Justice of the federation and all the learned law lords of the Supreme Court are statutory members of the Body of Benchers, including all the heads of strategic courts in Nigeria. For this reason, Nwosu considers Olanipekun’s refusal to pay the fine an act of indecency enough for him not to even think of applying to sit as chairman of the highest policy body where ethics and regulation of the legal profession will be discussed and formulated.
Besides, Nwosu avers that there will certainly arise an ugly and irreconcilable situation where young legal practitioners will be citing the judicial precedent of the condemnation by the highest court of the member of the bar who signed their legal certificates. Nwosu thus urged the NBA president to avoid a situation where this tragic occurrence of having Olanipekun emerge as chairman of BoB will be ascribed to his tenure.
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