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YOUR LETTERS The president the Bar needs It is essential that the new Nigerian Bar Association President should be of independent thought and action, free - and seen to be free ­from partisan and self-serving interests of government. In so doing the Bar will retain its prestige and respect among its membership and the Nigerian people. A candidate sponsored by the government and corporate interests cannot truly reflect and represent the interest of the Bar. A card-carrying member of a political party or a government appointee to one of its organs and agencies cannot exercise independent judgment and action on behalf of the Bar. Candidates that suffer this impediment must first resign their appointments and purge themselves of their partisanship before they can assume sensitive positions. For instance, the chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association Dutse Branch, Alhaji Garun Gabas, is a serving commissioner in the cabinet of Saminu Turaki. Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN, one of the presidential candidates, is a PDP appointee as chairman of the Legal Aid Council. Other problems posed by Chief Bayo Ojo’s candidacy include the following: Chief Bayo Ojo was in meetings where Bar elders agreed on the need to make the Bar more inclusive by instituting the geographical rotation of national offices. By the unwritten code of the conference of Northern Branches, all legal practitioners practicing in the 19 northern states and Abuja, FCT, can vie for election as part of the north. On this basis, in 2002 the Northern Branches refused to endorse M.U. Ibrahim from Katsina State and a former Attorney-General of that state for the position of 1st Vice President of the Association on the grounds that, although from the north, his practice was in Lagos. However, the principle of rotation of the Bar Elders envisaged does not permit the domination of the Bar leadership by one branch. As such, it is essential that Bar Elders from the north intervene and find a consensus option for the Bar Presidency in order to stop the distortion of the principle of rotation. Sulaiman Abdussamad, Kaduna.

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