Lawyer Petitions CJN Over Alleged Selective Use Of NBA Disciplinary Process

A legislative lawyer, Dr Tonye Clinton Jaja, has asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, to intervene over what he described as selective deployment of the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee by the Nigerian Bar Association.

Jaja said the matter raises concerns about fairness in legal discipline and could damage confidence in professional standards if left unchecked. The LPDC is the statutory body that handles disciplinary proceedings against legal practitioners found culpable of misconduct, and it is chaired by the CJN.

In a petition dated March 1, 2027, Jaja urged the CJN to step in urgently. He said the intervention was necessary to protect the legal profession from what he called selective use of disciplinary powers. According to him, the system is being used as "a sword" against some lawyers while operating as "a shield" for others who are seen as aligned with influential interests.

Jaja, who is Secretary of the Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners, and a former part-time Chairman of the Governing Board of the Nigerian Copyright Commission, said the trend has become a structural problem. He said he is currently involved in training lawyers with the Lesotho Ministry of Law and Justice and the Lesotho Law Reform Commission under a European Union project, and that his comparative exposure has sharpened concerns about the state of ethics enforcement in Nigeria.

He wrote that misconduct among Nigerian lawyers has reached what he called "epidemic proportions" and now poses a threat to the survival of the profession. He also referred to a March 2025 position in which the CJN acknowledged low adherence to ethics and professional standards among lawyers in the country.

To support his allegations, Jaja listed cases he said showed uneven enforcement by the NBA. In one example, he said the NBA issued a query to a lawyer in August 2025 over alleged misconduct and warned that the matter could proceed to the LPDC if directives were ignored. He said that by December 2025, the alleged misconduct persisted, including use of both NBA and Supreme Court logos on personal letterhead, yet no disciplinary action had followed.

He said his association, through its incorporated trustees, filed a suit seeking an order of mandamus to compel the NBA to carry out its statutory duty in that case.

Jaja also cited a 2021 matter in which the then Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission asked the NBA to institute charges against a lawyer. He said the request was based on evidence that the lawyer breached the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners, 2023, by standing as surety for a former Chairman of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund accused of diverting public funds amounting to ₦1 trillion. He said no LPDC prosecution has occurred in that case.

Another point raised in the petition was the non-enforcement of LPDC sanctions against some NBA officials allegedly indicted for online bullying and character assassination. Jaja said refusal to enforce decisions deepens distrust in internal accountability and sends mixed signals to younger members of the Bar.

He further linked the dispute to a broader professional debate, including advocacy for the Blue Silks rank as an alternative recognition framework to the Senior Advocate of Nigeria title. Jaja said NBA officials mounted what he described as a campaign of calumny against him in November 2025 by publishing false and defamatory claims online that he had been queried merely for introducing the Blue Silks framework.

He said the public narrative omitted a key legal development: that he had responded by filing an action at the Federal High Court, Abuja, involving the Incorporated Trustees of the NBA and seeking judicial clarity on the right of the incorporated trustees of the Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners to confer the Blue Silks rank under freedom of association guarantees in Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution.

Jaja also alleged inconsistency in another case involving a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. He said the NBA did not initiate proceedings before either the LPDC or the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee despite what he called involvement in promoting an unlawful body intended to operate as a parallel bar association, contrary to the Legal Practitioners Act, 1962, which recognises only one bar association for Nigerian lawyers, the NBA.

The petitioner called on the CJN to restore confidence in disciplinary enforcement through impartial and even-handed application of LPDC procedures. He said only transparent and consistent sanctions can reverse the current drift and protect the integrity of legal practice in Nigeria.