The recent public admission by the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Afam Osigwe (SAN), that he had a preferred successor and that neutrality was, therefore, conditional, was unequivocal in its candour. There was no hedging or linguistic camouflage. It was a freely and deliberately volunteered confessional statement.
Such statements are described as the “best evidence”. The Supreme Court had long settled that a voluntary confession, on its own, was sufficient to ground conclusions, even without corroboration. As stated in Jimoh v. State (2014) LPELR-22464 (SC), “A confessional statement, if voluntary, positive and unequivocal, is enough to sustain a finding.” Retraction does not neutralise truth; it merely shifts attention to credibility. The cost of a confession is not punishment; it is a consequence.
Videos circulating on social media show bottled water branded with the image of the President’s preferred candidate placed conspicuously on the President’s table at the NEC meeting, visible to all, captured on camera, and transmitted to the whole world. In advertising, this is known as product placement: a deliberate technique for signalling endorsement.
In governance, as in advertising, symbols matter. They settle perception, referred to in secular political parlance as ‘Body Language’. The NBA constitution, however, is built on the opposite instinct. It assumes that Bar leaders will resist the urge to shape succession, not because they lack preferences, but because the institution is larger than their appetites and ambitions. Those entrusted with power are expected to refrain from tilting the scales, not because they are incapable of doing so, but because legitimacy depends on the refusal.
The legal profession is unambiguous here. Where there is proximity, there must be restraint. Rule 1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners requires a lawyer to uphold the rule of law and maintain a high standard of conduct. Rule 27 further demands that lawyers observe fairness, good faith and courtesy toward fellow lawyers, recognising that the profession’s credibility is collective, not personal.
Against that framework, questions arise naturally: What becomes of institutional credibility when preference is no longer private? When is neutrality spoken of as optional rather than structural? More troubling still are persistent reports of diminished neutrality in sectional and branch elections, most recently in a manner that has produced a credibility deficit in one of the NBA’s most consequential sections, SPIDEL.
In a constitutional democracy under strain, the credibility of SPIDEL leadership is absolutely critical.
Can a section charged with defending public interest credibly do so if its own leadership process is contested? Is it consistent with constitutional design for a President to dissolve electoral arrangements midstream? Should the NBA President undemocratically narrow the field by disqualification where qualification had already been established?
The person who emerges as the next NBA President is very critical because Nigeria is approaching an election season in which democratic institutions will be tested severely. The capacity of the NBA to hold government accountable is dire.
The president’s admitted lack of objectivity neutralises the capacity of the NBA to hold the government accountable, first by creating a moral and ethical leadership crisis and secondly by supporting the candidate who is the choice of the current administration.
Neutrality, once made conditional, does not merely affect internal contests. It dulls the Bar’s voice in national life. It converts what should be an independent institutional conscience into a participant constrained by its own compromises.
Donald Abel, a social commentator, writes from Lagos
