What then is professional ethics? - Okechukwu Orisakwe Esq

                     Okechukwu Orisakwe Esq

I’ve been reading some comments by highly revered Senior Advocates, trying to justify President Buhari’s absence and indict Atiku’s. These SANs have, with due respect, become notorious for unguarded comments that tend to turn the law upside down in some circumstances or heat up the polity at other times. While the CJN saga was fresh, I even heard one of them dishing out all manner of bad words to the Honourable Justices that decided the much hyped Ngajinwa’s case, saying, inter alia, that their Lordships reached an “illegal and unconstitutional decision”.
My colleagues can recall that in addition to the several provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners, Section 12 of the Legal Practitioners Act provides that a Lawyer should not be found guilty of “infamous conducts” or engage in acts “unbecoming of a Legal Practitioner”. I am mindful that a breach of any or all of these provisions could bring down the sledge hammer of the Legal Practitioners’ Disciplinary Commitee... Now I ask, do we agree that the calamitous and political statements of these Senior Advocates that heat up our polity constitute “infamous conducts” as well as conducts “unbecoming of a Legal Practitioner”? My humble answer is in the affirmative.
If our collective answers are in the affirmative (which I believe they should), has the LPDC become a toothless dog? Or rather, that kind of dog that can only intimidate other domestic animals but nothing more? What about the LPPC that conferred the tank of SAN upon them, is it not high time they stripped them off of that hallowed silk? I recall what happened to Michael Andoaaka, former AGF who was stripped off his silk for political comments that weren’t as heavy as what we hear from the people under reference in this post. What is sauce for the goose, they say, is sauce for the gander. The nobility and integrity of this profession is being daily ridiculed.
And if that doesn’t stop, I am afraid the profession will ultimately find obscurity as it’s terminus...