MY original intention this week was to discuss a different subject. Record-breaking heatwaves are increasing demand for cooling, prompting the International Energy Agency (IEA) to warn of mounting pressure on electricity systems. I intended to argue that Nigeria must urgently treat grid restructuring and coordinated distributed energy systems as national priorities for affordable electricity, cooling, industry and economic development. Events, however, have compelled me to postpone that discussion.
Last week, I wrote about the shameful Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election and asked whether Nigerian lawyers could effectively guard Nigeria’s democracy if they could not convincingly guard the integrity of their own professional election. My argument was never merely about the NBA election. It was about the extraordinary influence the legal profession exercises over the Nigerian state. Lawyers shape constitutional interpretation, prosecute crimes, advise governments, and litigate or adjudicate election petitions that often determine political power because the legal profession occupies both the Bar and the Bench. The NBA is therefore one of Nigeria’s most consequential democratic institutions. Yet, reports indicate that neither the president-elect nor some of her principal opponents cast their own votes. Worse still, no one knows whether the litigation over the election will outlive the NBA President-elect’s two-year tenure.
Since that column was published, I have received several messages from lawyers, including one purportedly attributed to a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. In it, he lamented the conduct of the NBA election and made a startling observation: ‘Honestly speaking, I have since come to the conclusion that the NBA as presently constituted is irredeemable.’ He questioned reports that candidates spend billions of naira to lead a professional association, pay practising fees for colleagues, sponsor hotel accommodation, finance branch activities and conduct campaigns resembling political elections. He also alleged that some candidates enjoyed financial backing from federal and state governments. Whether those allegations are proven remains to be seen. When a lawyer of that stature reaches such a conclusion, Nigerians should pause and reflect.
Against this backdrop, the visit of the President-elect of the NBA to President Bola Tinubu has naturally generated public discussion. The NBA’s leadership should maintain both the reality and appearance of independence from the political executive for the health of our democracy. What should Nigeria do when one of its foremost Senior Advocates concludes that the NBA is ‘irredeemable’?
The monopoly of justice
The NBA is more than a professional association. Lawyers defend constitutional liberties, challenge executive excesses, prosecute crimes, protect private rights and interpret the laws upon which society rests. The Attorney-General of the Federation and all 36 Attorneys-General must be lawyers. When such an institution experiences an internal crisis of confidence, Nigerians cannot afford to dismiss it as merely an association quarrel. It becomes a societal concern.
These events reinforce a central argument in Chapter 8 of my forthcoming book, The Unfinished Nigerian Project: Rule of Law or Rule of Lawyers? A Case for Adopting a Jury System.
My concern has never been that lawyers are less ethical than engineers, doctors, accountants or teachers. Rather, it is that Nigeria has concentrated extraordinary institutional authority over justice within a single profession. Lawyers monopolise the Bench, the Bar, all thirty-seven constitutionally guaranteed offices of Attorney-General, constitutional litigation and the interpretation of the Constitution itself.
Power that is concentrated eventually becomes power that is insulated. We separate legislative, executive and judicial powers because no institution should become accountable only to itself. Has this monopoly over the justice system created incentives for the increasingly rancorous and heavily monetized struggle for leadership within the NBA? That is the constitutional question before us. Perhaps if the administration of justice is shared with other Nigerian professionals, ‘their learned colleagues’ might conduct their own leadership recruitment more civilly.
Justice must belong to society
Some readers responded to my earlier column by arguing that Nigeria is simply too corrupt for a jury system. One reader cited a recent criminal trial in the US State of Minnesota involving Somali defendants, where an attempt was made to bribe a juror. His conclusion was that corruption would simply migrate from judges and lawyers to jurors. The concern is understandable, but it overlooks a fundamental principle of institutional design. Good institutions are not built because people are virtuous; they are built because people are fallible. That is why democracies separate powers, establish independent courts, conduct elections and require audits-not to eliminate corruption, but to make it harder, costlier and easier to expose.
That is why I advocate a carefully designed jury or hybrid jury system for Nigeria. Nigeria need not copy American or British models wholesale. It should study comparative experience and develop a system suited to its constitutional and societal realities. The principle, however, is universal: justice is too important to be monopolised by lawyers. Justice should reflect not only legal expertise but also the conscience, values and moral judgement of society. Nigeria has people of integrity across every profession whose voices belong in the administration of justice. Ironically, the Minnesota example reinforces rather than weakens this argument. One conscientious juror was enough to frustrate an attempt to corrupt the judicial process. Institutions are stronger when authority is distributed rather than concentrated.
Law alone cannot produce justice because legal reasoning, however sophisticated, is no substitute for society’s conscience. That conscience should find expression in the administration of justice through a carefully designed jury or hybrid jury system-one that makes judges and lawyers more accountable to the public they serve and, perhaps, encourages greater restraint in the conduct of their own professional affairs.
A national reset
Many Nigerian lawyers are honourable professionals who have defended democracy, human rights and the rule of law at great personal cost. But institutions must never be judged by the integrity of their best members. They must also withstand the ambitions of their worst. No other major professional association in Nigeria-not the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, the National Association of Petroleum Explorationists, the Nigerian Medical Association, the Nigerian Society of Engineers or the Nigerian Union of Teachers-regularly attracts this level of political intrigue, financial inducement, electoral acrimony and public controversy over who leads it. The obvious question is: why?
The answer lies in the extraordinary concentration of institutional authority over justice within one profession. Such concentration inevitably creates incentives for fierce internal competition, political patronage and the monetisation of leadership contests. No democracy should entrust so much influence over one of its most important public institutions to a single profession, however distinguished that profession may be. Justice belongs to society-not to lawyers alone. This is not an argument against lawyers; it is an argument against concentrating the administration of justice within any single profession.
Nigeria should therefore begin a serious national conversation on introducing a carefully designed jury or hybrid jury system, so that justice is not merely administered in the name of the people, but with the meaningful participation of the people. Citizen participation in the administration of justice would broaden accountability, enrich deliberation and restore public confidence that justice reflects not only legal technicalities but also the conscience and moral values of society. If one of Nigeria’s foremost Senior Advocates now believes that the NBA, as presently constituted, is ‘irredeemable’, then our national conversation should not be about how the NBA redeems itself. It should be about redesigning a justice system concentrated within one profession 4and whether that concentration is creating unhealthy incentives-including the increasingly rancorous and heavily monetised struggle for leadership within the NBA.
Strong nations do not depend on the virtue of one profession. They distribute power. They widen participation. They build institutions that can withstand human imperfection.
Perhaps Nigeria’s true reset should begin by returning justice to society.