A senior Advocate of Nigeria Mike Ozekhome (SAN), holds out against plan by some aggrieved lawyers to form a faction out of the long existing Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) which they inculpated for bias following the withdrawal of the invitation which was earlier sent out to the Governor of Kaduna state Nasir El-Rufai to be a speaker at a conference of the NBA after an outcry from Nigerians using various social media platforms.
Ozekhome speaking on the creation of a factional NBA during a virtual meeting 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. "
Mike Ozekhome (SAN)
Ozekhome further stressed that majority of the members of the NBA will vehemently put up a strong resistance on any attempt to form a factional bar association pointing out that if aggrieved Northerners be given room to create a faction to satisfy personal interests, in not too long a time, lawyers from the southern, Western and Eastern regions respectively would desire a creation of theirs.
He said,
“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.”
“ 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.”
Ozekhome warning against allowing for such seed of discord to be sown, said the consequences are dire and may lead to 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.
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