…as new faction, NNBA emerges
A new faction of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) emerged on Thursday with the name, New Nigerian Bar Association, (NNBA.
According to the arrowheads who are lawyers from the core North, the development followed withdrawal of invitation to Governor of Kaduna state, Malam Nasir el-Rufai as a speaker in the 2020 NBA Conference, amongst other speakers.
A press release signed by two Northern lawyers who are the Conveners, Nuhu Ibrahim and Abdulbasit Suleiman indicated that the new association will be inaugurated soon.
The group stated “What has been happening recently has exposed the inability of the NBA to manage and contain the heterogeneity of it’s members as well as their various interests. It’s penal powers has been deployed discriminatively on the basis of ethnicity and regionalism.”
“As a body of Lawyers who have undergone training towards ensuring the promotion and protection of Human rights and liberties, the NBA is supposed to live above sentiments, regionalism and discrimination on any basis and of any kind.
“Therefore, the NBA cannot afford to be seen not to be upholding the rights and freedom of its own members if at all, it should be seen to be practicing what it preaches. As the Hausa saying goes: (Idan Kura tana maganin zaho, ta yi ma kanta (If Hyena has cure for diarrhoea let her use it for herself).
Reacting to the ugly development, a human rights activist and Constitutional lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN said the new faction will be resisted and urged the conveners to withdraw their actions.
Ozekhome speaking at the virtual annual general meeting of the NBA on Friday, Ozekhome said most members of the bar will resist any attempt to form a parallel association.
He said people are “trying to knock the head of NBA members against each other by introducing religious and ethnic connotations to a mere innocuous dis-invitation of my very good friend, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai.”
“For those trying to form an alternative Bar, please, let me use the oxymoron, make haste slowly, don’t go that way.
“When the tongue and the teeth disagree, inside the same buccal cavity, with the teeth biting the tongue, they sooner than later settle because they need each other for the tongue to help to speak up and for the teeth to help to masticate the food that the tongue itself will enjoy.
“So, drop all these issues of trying to form an alternative bar. Whether you call it New NBA or progressive NBA, it’s not going to work.
“The progressive forces in this country within the bar, the elders of the bar, most members of not all, senior advocates of Nigeria who know where we are coming from will resist it.”
He said if one faction is formed by aggrieved northerners, soon lawyers from the south, east and west would also want to create their own faction of the bar.
“The reason is that when you begin to create a different bar, let’s say for example northern bar or new bar, the people very soon are going to start calling for southern Nigerian army, southern Nigerian navy, western Nigerian air force, eastern Nigeria tax authority, midwest maritime authority,” he said.
“We will begin to hear of southern Nigeria NNPC, Central Bank, where are we heading to, that is nothing but balkanization of Nigeria. God forbid Afghanistan, God forbid USSR, God forbid Sudan, God forbid Ethiopia, God forbid India-Pakistan and Bangladesh. God forbid another Nigeria-Biafra pogrom”, he said.