Last Friday the
Squib ran into the veteran advocate at the secretariat of the Ikeja Branch of
the N.B.A where he granted this explosive and thought provoking interview,
counting the essentials of his angst about the STAMP & SEAL POLICY.
SQUIB: Can we
meet you sir?
OWOLABI:
I
am a legal practitioner called to the Bar in 1990. I own my
practice.
SQUIB: I can
see you standing there displeasing, while processing forms in respect for
obtaining the stamps for practice
OWOLABI: You
are right, but I am more than displeased, I am shocked and disgusted at the
whole exercise. It is a disgrace and clearly illegal and unconstitutional and
from the way the exercise is being carried you begin to suspect the integrity
of the stated purpose of the whole exercise.
SQUIB: What do
you mean sir?
OWOLABI:
Let's
start with the legality of the exercise. The policy states that your
processes, papers and letters must carry the stamps before they can be accepted
at the registeries or be considered valid for use otherwise.
People have cited
one or two Supreme Court judgments to back this position. I have asked for
these cases but nobody has been able to help out in that regard. But even if
that’s the Supreme Court position, that position is wrong. Don’t forget that
the Supreme is only final, not infallible!
My question is
this, who is the issuing authority of the almighty stamp without which a lawyer
can no longer practice his trade? The issuing authority is the Nigerian Bar
Association. How can that be normal, reasonable and right, when the NBA has
nothing to do with my qualification as a legal practitioner?
As we all know, it
is the Body of Benchers that call successful students of the Nigerian Law
School into the Bar of the Supreme Court, qualifying them as legal
practitioners.
Then why should it
be that it is not the Supreme Court or the Body of Benchers, the qualifier of
legal practitioners that will issue stamps empowering their candidate so to say
to practice but the Nigerian Bar Association, which is merely an association of
people who are already in the Bar.
When a legal
practitioner has run foul of the laws of his profession is it the NBA that
sanctions him? No. The warning, suspension or disbarment is done by the Body
which qualified him in the first instance into the profession.
So if it is the
Body of Benchers who can qualify and disqualify a legal practitioner, how is it
that it is another body - an association for that matter that now has the
capacity to effectively rusticate him or reduce him to a lawyer only in name?
Yes, that is the
effect of the stamp and seal policy. If you don’t have the N.B.A stamp, you
can’t practice and that means you can’t earn your livelihood.
Don’t you think it
is funny that somebody can be a member of the Inner Bar and yet he cannot
function as a legal practitioner despite his office and preferment if he
doesn’t have the stamp of the Nigerian Bar Association.
Also is the stamp,
my practicing license? I have paid my practicing fees, why can’t I then
practice except I have the stamp?
Is the N.B.A stamp
now a practicing stamp? And why should it be that my fees for practicing
license is not used to cover the stamp assuming the necessity of the stamp
exists.
I am not sure that
the authorities took time to think through the project before implementing and
enforcing.
Look my brother,
the imposition of this stamp is worse than double taxation, it is the worst
possible form of restraint of trade.
They have by this
stamp policy restrained most unfairly a duly qualified lawyer from practice
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