The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) on Monday decried lack of respect for seniors and what it termed the high-level of indiscipline among its members in the country.
The President of the NBA, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), lamented the resort to the social media by some legal practitioners in expressing their grievances against the leadership of the Nigerian judiciary.
Mahmoud stated this on Monday at the inauguration of nine committees of the NBA in Abuja on Monday.
While inaugurating the committee, the NBA president said the establishment of Committees is fundamental to ensure a more active Bar as it is not possible for the National Officers or the Secretariat to deal with all activities and functions of the NBA.
According to him, “The use of Committees allows lawyers who have interest and expertise in a particular area to focus on specific issues.”
“In view of the foregoing, this administration has constituted some Committees with a view to achieving our set objective,” he said.
One of the committees inaugurated is the welfare, saddled with the responsibility of designing a nationwide insurance policy to cover the risk to which legal practitioners are exposed to in the course of performing their duties such as accidents, deaths, whether by natural causes or other means.
Another committee inaugurated yesterday was the Human Rights Institute Governing Council which was given the task to advocate for the implementation of National action plan on Human Rights and coordinate human rights policies and programmes at the national and branch levels.
Also inaugurated was the Anti-Corruption Committee, which has the mandate to work with the 125 branches of the NBA to set up an Anti-Corruption Committee in each Branch and maintain the highest standards of conduct aimed at avoiding corrupt practices at the Bar and the Bench.
Other committees inaugurated are the NBA election working group, Criminal justice and la reform committee, NBA Editorial Board, NBA legislative and advocacy committee and Young Lawyers Forum.
The NBA president in his speech during the inauguration ceremony said the reports of the committees will not be left gathering dust in the archives.
“They will be implemented, either at the level of your national officers or NEC or Conference or even relevant National Institutions,” Mahmoud said and advised aggrieved members of the NBA to channel their grievances through appropriate channels, instead of resorting to denigrating comments in the media, adding that the Bar “cherishes its time-tested tradition of seniority”.
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