The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA has responded to an allegation made by Bayo Akinlade’s on the tittle “NBA Lagos Branch To Host Another Multi Million Naira Dinner Amidst Growing Human Rights Abuses And Dwindling Lawyers’ Income”
The response was through a statement released by NBA Lagos Publicity Secretary, Elo Adhekpukoli
Akinlade in his statement asserted that the same branch cannot even raise substantial funds to enable it’s members to respond to human rights violations and most of its committees that work to implement the core function of the NBA constitution because they do not have the funds to operate effectively.
Read NBA Lagos Response Below;
Is this jealousy or fair criticism?
Lagos Branch members have worked hard this year despite the challenging circumstances in which we operate in Nigeria. We’ve done our best for the legal profession, for Nigeria and for ourselves too. Mr. Bayo Akinlade can attend our dinner if he so wishes. The dinner will be sold-out as usual. We’ll celebrate ourselves for all the small and great feats we’ve achieved this year, and next year we’ll continue doing our best for our members, the legal profession as a whole and Nigeria as best as we can. If Mr. Bayo Akinlade doesn’t want to eat, he should leave us alone to eat and celebrate ourselves. It is not his money. We will not accept his “challenge” to a sorrowful, depressing, joyless, unthankful and boring way of living after working hard and surviving several challenges for the whole year. We’re not obliged to live the way he wants.
He turned a blind eye to all our successful initiatives this year, but doesn’t want us to celebrate ourselves. He takes an unfair swipe at our “big and influential” members, he relies on rumors about the expenses of the Branch (he’s not our member by the way), he believes our members cannot decide to fete themselves once in a year after all the hard work throughout the year. He prefers that we should all mourn perpetually and not eat or dance or take care of our mental health (we’ll not subscribe to such lowly, sorrowful and depressing lifestyle). Maybe he would suggest that we should all not eat for the whole year. He has not told us if he has not spent anything on any form of celebrations (birthdays, weddings, friends hangout e.t.c.) this year. He writes ignorantly about how we fund our Branch initiatives. He forms a ridiculous and baseless opinion that our Branch is “one of the most irrelevant in terms of standing for Justice and the promotion of the Rule of Law”. How exactly did he arrive at that? He doesn’t even know our membership strength! He’s relying on conjectures. He says our over “8000 members” are jokers. He doesn’t even have an idea how our dinners are funded. Is Mr. Bayo Akinlade suggesting that our members cannot spend 7k or 12k or 25k of their hard earned money to unwind and celebrate themselves? He suggests that our dinner is “stomach infrastructure”, another evidence of lack of understanding. Who is engaging politics of stomach infrastructure here? Is it the members who are subscribing to the dinner voluntarily or who exactly? Stomach infrastructure for a self-funded dinner?
We shouldn’t be promoting ignorant criticisms from lawyers who are not members of our Branch please. I’m not sure Mr. Bayo Akinlade has attended all our Monthly General Meetings and other events and programmes that the Branch has facilitated in the area of promoting human rights, providing solutions to the oppressed members of society, leading campaigns for good governance and touching on the core issues that help lawyers and especially our members to thrive in legal practice.
Please ask Mr. Bayo Akinlade to write us formally for our scorecard before going to town with such an unfair and uninformed statement. We may oblige him even though he’s not our member.
Our members who have not exercised their democratic right to stay uninformed of the stellar initiatives of the NBA Lagos Branch are all aware that the Branch has done so well and is at the forefront of EVERYTHING GOOD about the legal profession in Nigeria. Mr. Bayo Akinlade should rather focus on building his Ikorodu Branch.
Elo Adhekpukoli
Publicity Secretary, NBA Lagos