Lagos — Dr. Babatunde Ajibade (SAN) is the primary member of the 1989 set of the Nigerian Legislation Faculty to be conferred with the celebrated rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). On this interview, he speaks about why he needs to develop into the following President of the Nigerian Bar Affiliation (NBA) and on different sundry points.
Younger legal professionals usually complain that the NBA does nothing apart from accumulate annual dues and organise the bar convention. What’s your view?
Younger legal professionals have to be the main focus of the NBA. They’re the way forward for the career, and what the career can be is a operate of how a lot it invests in them. I’ve complete plans to deal with points referring to their welfare and development. These embrace applicable remuneration, situations of service, cost of practising charges and department dues, required statutory deductions and contributions, coaching and capability improvement, enhanced use of know-how, sexual harassment and bullying within the office, amongst others.
Why do you need to be President of NBA?
I feel legal professionals ought to select me over the opposite candidates for quite a lot of causes. Firstly, I’m the one one that mixes the talents and sensible information of a solicitor and advocate; having been engaged in each transactional and litigation follow at comparatively excessive ranges. This places me in a vantage place to grasp and deal with the challenges encountered in each of those sides of authorized follow in Nigeria.
Secondly, I neither belong to nor am I sponsored by any of the ability blocks throughout the NBA. Thus, I’ve the power to unite the bar and advance the reason for the authorized career with independence.
Thirdly, I’m not beholden to authorities and have made it a matter of non-public selection and coverage to not court docket authorities briefs; thus guaranteeing my independence. In addition to, I cherish my good title, status and integrity and imagine that these are essential qualities required for anyone looking for to steer the bar.
I’ll deliver vital alternatives for worldwide collaboration to the NBA, significantly the younger legal professionals, due to my involvement with worldwide our bodies such because the Worldwide Bar Affiliation (IBA) the place I’m Co-Vice Chair of the Africa Discussion board.
What are your ideas on zoning adopted by NBA for its elections?
Ordinarily, I might be towards zoning and would urge that management ought to be primarily based solely on benefit. Nonetheless, the truth of our geopolitical scenario in Nigeria and the necessity to make sure that no part or group feels marginalised or excluded is what has made zoning a necessity.
Having mentioned this, I do not imagine that zoning and the pursuit of management by benefit are mutually unique. I imagine that each zone and part in our nation has the potential and capability to supply leaders we are going to all be happy with. The problem is to function the zoning system in a fashion that such leaders are allowed to emerge and should not suppressed by obscure and parochial preparations that search to impose the need of some on the numerous.
You had been unable to safe the backing of the pan-Yoruba legal professionals affiliation, Egbe Amofin, for the 2020 NBA presidential election and you’ve got faulted the method by way of which your brother silk, Dele Adesina, was nominated. Why?
That is the exact level I used to be referring to in my earlier reply. The rationale I’ve refused to be sure by the Egbe Amofin choice course of is as a result of it was obscure and missing in objectivity or transparency. It failed to fulfill the fundamental take a look at of a suitable choice course of for quite a lot of causes. I will title just a few of them.
Way back to August, 2019, and with none session with the generality of legal professionals of Yoruba extraction, the de facto chief of Egbe Amofin, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), referred to as a gathering at which it was declared that Deacon Dele Adesina (SAN) was Egbe Amofin’s most well-liked candidate for the NBA presidential election.
Within the face of protests at this try at imposition, this agenda was stepped down. It’s equally noteworthy that Chief Olanipekun and Adesina are in-laws. Deacon Adesina’s son is married to Chief Olanipekun’s daughter. Regardless of this clear and evident battle of pursuits, Chief Olanipekun continued to preside over and dominate the Egbe Amofin choice course of. He was instrumental in funding and convening the assembly that was referred to as to provoke the choice course of. He additionally presided over the assembly and proposed the structure of the committee that was set as much as display screen candidates and likewise proposed its Chairman, Chief Niyi Akintola (SAN).
Regardless of calls for made on the day the committee was arrange, it failed to supply the factors by which it proposed to select from among the many candidates till late within the day on which the deadline for submission of pursuits was to run out after which said that its resolution would nonetheless be subjected to ratification by the management of Egbe Amofin.
It was in these circumstances that I withdrew from the method; which had clearly develop into a farce at that time. I wrote a letter to the choice committee chaired by Chief Niyi Akintola setting out in nice element what had transpired up till then and the explanations for my withdrawal.
Your resolution to run for president might cut up the South West votes in favour of a non-Yoruba candidate because it occurred when Augustine Alegeh (SAN) turned president in 2014. Ought to this occur, some may even see your candidature as sabotage of the core South West aspiration. What’s your tackle this?
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My candidature is just not designed to sabotage the South West aspiration. In spite of everything, I’m a Yoruba man too. Nothing would please me greater than making the Yoruba race proud by profitable the upcoming election and making vital and impactful contributions to the advance of the Nigerian authorized career and its justice sector for the advantage of all Nigerians.
To be able to additional set up my concern for and need to guard the curiosity of the Yoruba race within the upcoming election and stop a recurrence of what transpired in 2014 when my buddy and brother Austin Alegeh (SAN) from Edo State defeated the three candidates from the South West, I had advisable to Chief Olanipekun that it could be smart for us as Yoruba to succeed in an lodging with our brothers from the Mid-West such that we might rotate the zoned places of work within the NBA between us on an agreed formulation.
Certainly, I had taken it upon myself to go to Chief T. J. Onomigbo Okpoko (SAN) and different leaders of the Mid-West bar in Warri to debate this situation ever earlier than the assembly of Egbe Amofin held in Ibadan, and so they agreed that this was the wise resolution to the perennial competitors between our two sub-zones.
Supply: allafrica.com
