If you are above 30 years old, you would remember Alao Aka Basorun, the fiery NBA President who gave the military a good run for their money.
If you lived in Nigeria a lit bit earlier, you will also remember that the NBA used to be a bastion for the fight to protect Human Right and also a major weapon used to fight against bad government.
Today, that body is dead as we used to know it but instead riddled with members who walk around with dirty smelly black suits looking for briefs in the cesspool of corruption to eke a living.
My brother Olu Akpata during his tenor tried to lift it up but like a child cursed by the gods went back to its bile immediately after.
I spoke with a senior member of the bar recently and he was all up in tears and self pity as to what the once glorious NBA had turned into.
According to him, to be a top NBA Executive meant securing lucrative briefs from government and other such bodies hence the falling off of the teeth of this association and its attendant loss of vibrancy even at these times.
Today, all we mostly hear from them is theft of phones during their annual conventions, scramble for corporate gifts ensuing in biting, tearing of gowns and fighting and lastly hosting of drug addled musicians who would rather climb a ladder than sing to them.
In all of these fight against state capture or bad government, the NBA has been very very silent and subdued.
Its almost as if they have been proscribed. No noise, no press statement, no support, no matches, nothing that can remind us of that vibrant body who stood firmly against military dictatorship.
This is very sad as to how an organisation that has produced such notable human rights fighters like Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana and the rest can slip into a state of lethargic anomie in our very own eyes.
Today, all you here is the scrabble to be made SAN and the avarice that goes with that.
My friend tells me that one of the qualifications is the number of appearances and not number of victory and that is why you would see a tenant who has not paid his rents for 20years dragging his case all the way to the supreme court simply because the lawyer wants to hit the numbers of appearances.
The sorry state of the NBA is a clear reflection of the judiciary and the profession.
A profession that used to pride itself as a learned one is now looking like a horde of huns where everything and anything goes.
Fake lawyers, fake judicial officers , kobo kobo judgements – kai!
“The system is now facing a hell of a time trying to retain public confidence.”
Feelers I am even getting is that the struggle for the Chief Justice of the Federation is all but above board.
Some have averred that the most qualified- the very distinguished Justice Kekere-Ekun who is adjudged as one of the finest in the land may have a herculean time appointed for very obvious reasons.
For this statement to even be uttered shows the extent to which merit and professionalism has been battered within that community.
So where lies the hope for the common man when the guiding retort for injustice is – go to court.
The judiciary has been made a mockery by the cascading collapse of values in the general society and also by the inherent indiscipline and collapse of ethical guidelines within their fold and this is why, today the NBA is but a caricature of its former self.
Should we cry for them?
– The Duke of Shomolu
