FAKE LAWYER BECOMES NBA TREASURER

Like other branches of the Nigerian Bar association, the Ibadan Bar is still battling with the scourge of quacks in the legal profession. In a recent move to curb the plague, the Branch in March 2012 under its chairman Seun Abimbola Esq. set up the Anti-Touting and Ethics Committee of the Branch under the chairmanship of Tunde Gade Esq.

 

The foremost term of reference of the Committee predictably is “to identify, expose and ensure the prosecution of fake lawyers or unqualified lawyers masquerading as lawyers.”

 

The committee soon set to work and within a short time nine persons, including one Miss Abiodun Anne Omolayomi suspected to be fake lawyers, practicing in Ibadan were invited by the Gade Committee to forward to her, documentary proofs of their qualifications as legal practitioners.

 

Now the said Miss Abiodun Anne Omolayomi was no ordinary member of the NBA Ibadan Branch. She was the treasurer of the association by virtue of winning election a few months ago.

 

A lithe pretty chick of a lady and always attractively packaged, “the Barrister” was well known at the Bar and featured prominently at the programmes of the Branch. She was also known to be married to one Mr. Lucas, a well known staff or independent contractor with the national body of the Association.

So when the news seeped out that she was one of those the Gade Committee was investigating, many dismissed the allegation with a wave of the hand.

However concerns for the lady’s integrity rose when instead of simply furnishing the Gade Committee with the necessary proofs demanded, she resorted to filibustering.

She did this by sending a letter to the Committee to the effect that she would comply with the demands of the Committee only if the committee obliged her with a copy of the petition against her.

Undeterred by this response, the Committee formally enquired about her status from the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the custodian of the Rolls of Legal Practitioners duly called to the Nigerian Bar.

When the response came, it stated categorically that the name of Abiodun Anne Omolayomi could not be found in the said “Sacred Rolls.”

It was the time for the police to move in. However the smart alec of a lady who had paraded herself for years as a qualified Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigerian avoided apprehension by the expedience of doing a disappearing act till date, from Ibadan and all her other known locations.

The Squib authoritatively learnt that the fake lawyer’s husband was terribly gutted at the exposure of his wife as a quack. The poor man never knew the ‘lawyer’ he married was a liar!