Onnoghen, Salami commend NBA for providing intellectual compass, helping the nation
Oluwatosin Shonde:
The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen has commended members of the Legal Profession for always providing what he described as the intellectual compass for the country. This is even as the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN) described the NBA as a premium association that had assisted the country in various spheres.
The duo gave this hint on Sunday at the 58th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja with the theme “Transition, Transformation and Sustainable Institutions’’.
The CJN said the choice of President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana as the main speaker for this year’s conference and other notable local and internal resource persons spoke volume to how NBA had expanded the frontier of the conference.
“President Nana Akufo-Addo is a vibrant Legal Practitioner of many decades and has championed the cause of human rights for many years before becoming a president.
“He therefore reserves the right to speak to the theme, and it is our hope that the conference would come out with salient outcomes that would enrich our association and country’’, CJN said.
On the forthcoming general election, Onnoghen said democracy provides citizens the freedom to decide who govern them.
“The significance of the ballot for sustaining democracy must be protected by all and sundry. The electoral members must be thought to conduct themselves in the most acceptable manner. In the event of election disputes, the judiciary must be prepared to play its role with substantial credibility’’, Onnoghen said.
On the attempt to introduce flexibility in filing of appeals at the Supreme Court, the CJN said the deadline for the Nigeria Legal E-mailing System would soon be activated.
According to him, the system is deployed to end paper filing of processes in the apex court.
He however, advised the lower court across the country to adopt similar measure to forestall the present cumbersome nature of filing processes in courts.
Malami also said the association was an agent of transformation and positive change, adding that this year’s conference had shown the mileage the association could cover.
He said the country’s journey toward ensuring supremacy of laws was still in order, adding that the government had in the last three year strengthened the country’s prosecutorial agencies to perform better.
On his part, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, outgoing President of the NBA, said the association had in the last two years embarked on programmes to build the confidence of the public on the profession.
Mahmoud said the association was interested in the growth of the country, adding however that such growth could be stiffened if rule of law was not in place.
He said the choice of the conference theme was deliberate, adding that it was intended to cure the widespread disconnect and weakness in most of the country’s institutions.
On security, the NBA president said the association has had on the spot assessments of situations in the North East, Kaduna, Zamfara, and Benue.
He said the Federal Government must increase its visibility in those trouble spots to abate the ongoing killings by hoodlums.
Mahmoud further said that the practice where those state governments used their allocations to fund federal security agents must be discouraged as according to him, the practice is draining state funds.
Mahmoud said the 3-day conference would address Climate Change, Human Rights, Equality/Justice, Rule of Law, Security, Conflict Resolution as well as Innovation in Technology.