by 
Teri Wellington
Well, lots of people would be uncomfortable with the topic of this commentary. They would shift uneasily in their chairs and make faces, they would grimace and run to their defensive trenches. They would lay flat with their RPGs on their shoulders…ready to fight back and attack if need be lest they be smoldered by the fiery fury of ever blazing truth.
When law students get to the law school, their teachers advise them to undergo compulsory pupilage. They extol the loftiness of pupilage; they submit in emphatic terms that a legal career devoid of pupilage is a disaster waiting to occur, a tree without strong roots, a figurative statue with feet of clay as gleaned by the ancient prophet Daniel.
Some of the teachers, depending on their own experience or inclination, then advise the students (Would be pupils) to stay with their principals for at least a particular number of years. Some have suggested ten years, others seven and others five.
Many of the students with older siblings or friends as practicing lawyers immediately discountenance this advice almost in its entirety. Some other students assiduously take the advice and imagine a few years of pupilage and an ever prosperous and glory filled eternity of legal practice. On social media, the question that would come after would be ‘should we tell them?’
Majority of Law Firms Breach the Nigerian Labour Law
When these budding students suddenly become pupils in some firm that naturally endears depression, (Please, this is without prejudice to the standard firms who are building lives and careers. This commentary takes a particular set of chambers as a case study. We are all too familiar with their gimmicks and antecedents) they then become Socratic or Platonic philosophers musing the idea of eking a living out of their long abandoned gift or talents. They are summarily given tasks after sham interviews without employment/offer letters as stipulated by the Nigerian Labour Law (In my opinion, lawyers are they who breach the Nigerian Labour Law the most), many do not have leave days, pension plans, tax provisions and HMO plans (Since there are no offer letters), their job includes dangerous out of station/jurisdiction trips that see them lodge in dangerous low-cost taverns.
Why would we breach the apex Nigerian regulation with so much pomp and expect the Nigerian Police to comply with the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 (And other allied criminal procedure laws) for example? Do we think the Policeman (for example) has no brother or son or friend who is a lawyer whom they sit and discuss some of these issues with? It reeks of great hypocrisy for lawyers to breach a certain law and then cry foul when another set of people breach another. Aren’t we all made of same stock?
Asides the physical and economic neglect, some of the masters of the new pupils subject them to psychological punishment. Many have lost their voices and self-esteem in the quest for an upward metamorphosis. The refrain in Christendom is that, to live, one has to die, to be great, one has to be low. So in the quest of becoming a distinguished lawyer, many take the deep plunge from studentship to ‘pupilage’ and sadly, many never emerge from that pupilage. They become grown lawyers with old wigs and gowns needing some love but with the scars of their pupilage. They set out on a quest to make lots of pupils like themselves out of erstwhile vibrant students.
The Society Would Not Treat Us Better Than We Treat Ourselves
I have seen and heard lawyers talk about the ridicule that lawyers have been subjected to by non-lawyers and by extension, the Nigerian society. People try to trick their lawyers and not pay them their fees. They have learnt the art from the senior lawyers who apparently treat their juniors like indentured servants and boastfully place themselves on lofty pedestals. Haven’t we seen controversial videos of lawyers unhappily opening car doors for able bodied lawyers who can open car doors themselves? Or apparently hungry looking lawyers with so much life troubles carrying heavy and hefty bags and law reports for their master who knows they are unhappy and doesn’t give a hoot about their demeanour and underlying troubles and trauma? We see these things yet choose to ignore. We see the red lights that warn off would be entrants, we see the wolverine fangs that bare themselves at our new recruits, these things send them on the migratory run we now seem so bothered about.
Do we really care about the spate of the profession? When I mean care, I mean, do we truly care? Rather than activism of cosmetic value and beaten and worn lines advocating reforms, do we go the extra mile to actually try to restore some nobility to our profession like we were told it was in the days of old? What can be noble about a haggard looking lawyer managing to survive on NGN30, 000.00 (Thirty Thousand Naira) in a God created month? I would stop this paragraph here.
Reputable Firms (Why Aren’t the Names Ever Mentioned?) and Disreputable Fees
The Law firms are always reputable. Reputable by what standards though? If I be a reputable man, God forbid I buy a trumpet from the music stores of Ojuelegba and begin to sing my own praises. Doesn’t that make me lose my repute (If any was ever present?) the tales I have been told from some of those reputable firms are disreputable to say the very least. Far below the global standards and measures of best practices, in flagrant violation of the Nigerian Labour Law
Legal Japa/Exodus
There is a very terrible problem befuddling the Nigerian State. We have coined a colloquial term for it. The term is Japa. Japa which simply means to run (for dear life, sanity sake, mental health, healing) has become a word fit to be etched in the English dictionaries of the current times. We are experiencing mass Japa at the National level; vibrant youths are fleeing the Country for some of the reasons mentioned above. You do not Japa if the conditions are favourable, you mostly Japa from Sapa (Apologies to the people of the beautiful Vietnamese city of Sapa, Sapa as used here, means hardship) and same Japa has become a thing in our profession, young lawyers observe the Sapa from afar and immediately Japa to some other profession or craft. Like it is said on the streets, ‘They can’t come and run and try to kill themselves’
Post Scriptum
I particularly admire the Olumide Akpata administration at the efforts that was put into the welfare of lawyers. The Administration tried to achieve a minimum wage for lawyers in employment and a scale of charges for lawyers heading others or practicing on their own. Nothing much eventually came from it. It was a good start however; lots of prophets came along before Jesus Christ eventually did.
Lots of things have been said in this commentary. At the same time, lots of things have been left unsaid. It is good to pour out your mind, sometimes when you totally empty your mind, it touches the sore spots of the conscience of another/others and rather than ruminate on Dan Fodio who says only truth can heal conscience, they deepen the sore of their consciences and unconscientiously, try to fight you for pricking their conscience.
Lots of students and pupils may be able to relate. After all, their tales served as the muse for the commentary.
Oya, students and pupils! Can’t you relate?
God bless you for this, Counsel.