By Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu
There is a deeply troubling irony at the heart of Nigerian jurisprudence. It is one that the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) has chosen, with breathtaking audacity, to weaponise against one of the country’s most determined defenders of constitutional rights. The recent stripping of the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) from Chief Mike Ozekhome, a man yet to be convicted of any offence, represents not merely an institutional overreach but a calculated subversion of the very presumption of innocence that forms the bedrock of Nigeria’s legal order. That Ozekhome, who has spent decades prosecuting causes in the public interest, defending the defenceless, and challenging executive recklessness from the rooftops of courts across this nation, should now find himself publicly humiliated by the very system he served is a paradox that demands urgent interrogation.
The facts, stripped of sentiment, are these: Chief Ozekhome is facing allegations of forgery. He has not been tried. He has not been convicted. No court of competent jurisdiction has returned a verdict against him. Yet the LPPC, operating in a domain that ought to be governed by the same principles it expects its members to uphold, proceeded to revoke his SAN rank, which is an attainment earned through decades of intellectual rigour, courtroom excellence, and meritorious practice. The message delivered by this action is both unmistakable and constitutionally offensive. It says that for lawyers of a certain profile, the mere allegation of wrongdoing is sufficient to trigger professional obliteration. This is not discipline. It is prior punishment. And prior punishment in the absence of conviction is antithetical to every principle of natural justice, fair hearing, and the rule of law that the Nigerian bar and bench profess to hold sacred.
As a matter of fact, the presumption of innocence is not a technicality. It is not a procedural nicety designed to inconvenience prosecutors or frustrate regulatory bodies. It is a foundational constitutional guarantee enshrined in Section 36(5) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), which provides, in terms that admit of no ambiguity, that every person charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The drafters of that provision did not carve out an exception for legal practitioners. They did not insert a footnote reading “except when the LPPC deems otherwise.” The presumption is universal, it is absolute, and it is non-negotiable. Therefore, and any body that purports to inflict professional death upon an accused person before trial, has arrogated to itself a judicial power it does not possess and cannot justify.
The timing of the LPPC’s action is equally instructive. Chief Ozekhome has not been shy in his public commentary on matters of governance, constitutional integrity, and elite impunity. His voice has been uncomfortable for the powerful. His pen has been wielded without deference to those who occupy the corridors of state. It is therefore impossible, in the current political climate, to view this episode without asking the most uncomfortable of questions. These are whether the revocation of his SAN rank is a professional sanction or a political one. Even if that question yields no definitive answer, the mere fact that it can be asked, is itself a stain on the credibility of the process. Institutions that wield disciplinary powers over members of a learned profession have a heightened obligation to ensure that their actions are not only legally defensible but manifestly beyond suspicion of ulterior motive.
The indictment of this episode does not end with the LPPC. It extends, with equal force, to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which membership those in LPPC also ascribe to. The NBA constitution provides for honourary membership for all judicial officers serving or retired. In effect, all judges in Nigeria rise from the Nigerian Bar. NBA is thus seen as the umbrella body that exists to protect the rule of law, defend the rights of its members, and uphold the sanctity of legal process. The NBA’s response to the Ozekhome fate must be measured against its institutional track record, and that measurement does not produce a flattering picture. For years, the NBA has watched in relative silence as politicians, many of them lawyers called to the bar, some of them even active bearers of the SAN distinction, have faced serious allegations of corruption, abuse of office, and outright theft of public funds, and yet suffered not a whisker of professional consequence.
The country has witnessed, with distressing regularity, the spectacle of governors, ministers, senators, and party chieftains, many of them, individuals who were sworn into the bar with all the attendant obligations of honour, integrity, and fidelity to the rule of law, standing accused of mind-boggling financial malfeasance. Courts have, in several instances, convicted some of these figures, or made adverse findings against them. Yet the NBA has generally maintained a suspicious silence on the question of whether their professional privileges should be reviewed like in Ozekhome’s case. The distinction it appears to draw, whether consciously or otherwise, is not between the guilty and the innocent, but between those who practice law and those who use their legal training as a credential for political office. This distinction is untenable.
The contradiction becomes even more glaring when one recalls that the NBA and its leadership have, on numerous occasions, stood in open solidarity with politicians undergoing prosecution. The courtrooms of Abuja and Lagos have seen senior lawyers, some wearing the SAN badge alongside the weight of bar leadership positions, appearing as counsel for accused officeholders, attending trials as moral support, and issuing public statements insisting on the right of the accused to a fair hearing and the presumption of innocence. These are not inherently wrong positions. They reflect sound legal principle. But they are rendered profoundly hypocritical when the same institutional energy is not deployed to protect a colleague, who faces the self-same presumption of innocence that the bar so loudly champions for its political clients.
Indeed, the most damning aspect of the NBA’s posture is not what it has done but what it has conspicuously failed to do. Nigeria has had state governors who were indicted for financial recklessness, some arraigned before courts, and in some cases convicted, and who subsequently returned to politics, won elections, assumed office again, and were neither stripped of their bar membership nor censured by the NBA. Some have been sworn in as elected officials while their corruption trials were still ongoing, their cases adjourned from month to month, and the presumption of guilt in the court of public opinion suspended by the accident of electoral victory. The bar and LPPC watched. They were largely silent, maybe, maintained table manners. No emergency sessions of the NBA or LPPC, was convened. No statements or resolutions were issued demanding the suspension of privileges pending the resolution of criminal charges. The standard that is now being applied to Ozekhome, that an allegation alone is sufficient basis for professional sanction, was never applied to them.
This selectivity corrodes the moral authority of the legal profession in ways that cannot be easily repaired. The NBA derives its legitimacy from its commitment to principle over person, to process over outcome, to the rule of law over the convenience of the powerful. When that commitment is applied inconsistently, when it is invoked to shield the politically connected and deployed to punish the professionally inconvenient, the bar ceases to be a guardian of justice and becomes an instrument of it. The resulting public cynicism is entirely rational. Citizens who observe the legal establishment protecting corrupt politicians while brutalising an accused colleague are entitled to conclude that the profession has abandoned its own founding values.
But there is a window for remedy. And, it is not complicated. It is the consistent application of the principles that the NBA and LPPC proclaim. Chief Ozekhome need not be deranked pending the conclusion of his trial. Deranking him while his trail is about starting means pronouncing him guilty before his offence is proven. If he is ultimately convicted, the appropriate sanctions can then be applied in accordance with due process. If he is acquitted, the damage done to his reputation and career by premature professional punishment must be acknowledged and, to the extent possible, remedied. But, how would that be remedied? Beyond the individual case, the NBA must conduct a thoroughgoing review of how it engages with the question of professional conduct in the context of criminal proceedings, both for lawyers in private practice and for those who have transitioned into political life. The standard must be the same. The law must apply equally. The presumption of innocence must be sacrosanct, not selectively, not situationally, but always.
Ozekhome has spent a lifetime defending others in the dock. He has appeared before courts to argue for the rights of the accused, the vulnerable, the politically persecuted. It would be a historical tragedy of the darkest kind if the system to which he devoted his professional life denied him, in his own hour of need, the elementary protection he fought so hard to secure for others. If the LPPC’s action is a travesty, NBA’s silence is a dereliction. And together, they constitute a mockery of the legal profession, one that lawyers must unambiguously repudiate.
*Uchegbu is a member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors
