IS THE GROWING NUMBER OF LAWYERS A MAJOR PROBLEM OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION IN NIGERIA?

By Sylvester Udemezue

The recent call to the Nigerian Bar of over 5,700 new lawyers has stirred considerable public debate. A key question emerging from the discussions is whether Nigeria is already producing too many lawyers. In my respectful view, the number of lawyers being called to the Nigerian Bar annually is not one of the real challenges confronting the legal profession in Nigeria. On the contrary, available statistics and comparative studies suggest that Nigeria is still under-lawyered, relative to its population and legal needs.

WHAT, THEN, ARE THE REAL ISSUES?

(a) The NBA: A Profession’s Watchdog or a Spectator? Permit me to say this without malice but with profound concern: The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has, unfortunately, become the number one problem of the legal profession in Nigeria. Permit me to address this assertion through the lens of critical questions:

(i). What Concrete Steps Has the NBA Taken to Expand the Legal Practice Space? My Answer: Sadly, next to nothing. Rather than confronting the structural and existential threats to the profession, the NBA, both at national and branch levels, appears more engrossed in non-essential pursuits that add no value to the economic or professional lives of Nigerian lawyers. There are clear, practical interventions the NBA could, and should, champion:

1. Creation of Legal Departments in Local Governments: Nigeria is one of the few nations without established Legal Departments at the Local Government level. This is both shocking and unacceptable. If each of Nigeria’s 774 LGAs were to employ just 20 lawyers, that alone would result in over 15,000 jobs for Nigerian lawyers (many of whom are today either underemployed or unemployed) with the consequential immense benefits to the Nigerian society and administration of justice and human rights. See “Ten Immediate Benefits of Having A Legal Department in Local Governments In Nigeria & Ten Stakeholders To Make This Happen,” By Sylvester Udemezue (published on 04 April 2021).

2. Implementation of Section 66(3) of the Nigeria Police Act, 2020: Section 66(3) of the Nigeria Police Act, 2020 mandates that each police station must be assigned at least one police officer who is a legal practitioner and whose responsibility is to promote human rights compliance within that division. If implemented faithfully, this provision could create thousands of jobs for lawyers and simultaneously sanitize the criminal justice system. I have taken time to discuss the benefits of full implementation of this all-important section: “How Implementing Section 66(3) of the Nigeria Police Act 2020 Could Minify Frictions Between Lawyers and Policemen Over Violation of Human Rights of Nigerians At Police Stations [See 14 Other Benefits]” By Sylvester Udemezue (04 January 2024).

3. Mandating Legal Departments in All Government MDAs: Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) should, as a matter of policy or law, have functional legal departments staffed by lawyers. Even if 60% of MDAs across Nigeria employed an average of 10 lawyers each, that could translate into over 30,000 additional legal jobs nationwide with the resultant advantages to governance and society. See: “Enlarging Job Space & Making Lawyers More Useful To Society” By Sylvester Udemezue (TheNigeriaLawyer; 30 December 2019).

4. Stamping Out Delay in Justice Delivery: NBA-backed-or-initiated Legislative reform aimed at reducing judicial delays could revolutionize the justice system. Swift justice would not only restore public confidence in the courts but would also mean more briefs and trust for legal practitioners. A delayed system discourages litigation, and consequently, discourages legal practice thereby taking away many hundreds of thousands of jobs that could have come to lawyers.

5. Impregnable And Self-enforcing Legislation on Legal Practitioners’ Remuneration: The enactment of the Legal Practitioners’ Remuneration Order (LPRO) 2023 was a commendable step. But what has followed since? Rather than meaningful enforcement, we see NBA officials begging stakeholders to comply with it. Is this how serious professions enforce compliance? See: “Rethinking System Change in Nigeria: Why Only Impregnable Legal Reforms Can Deliver Real Impact. (Plus Case Studies; Draft Impregnable Provisions)” By Sylvester Udemezue (published 20 May 2025). Why should lawyers be paid peanuts for conveyancing transactions worth millions? If a parcel of land is sold for ₦200 million and the lawyer earns only ₦500,000-₦1,000,000, or worse, if land is sold for ₦10 million and the lawyer receives ₦200,000, how is that sustainable? Where there is no remuneration, there is exploitation. And where there is exploitation, justice cannot thrive. NBA must push for impregnable remuneration mechanisms backed by strict-liability and self-enforcing statutory penalties to ensure lawyers are paid what they deserve and that charge-bail-lawyers have no opportunity of truncating the efforts. Other jurisdictions, such as the UK and South Africa, have enforceable scale-of-fees frameworks that are taken seriously.

(ii). WHY ARE THESE ISSUES NOT BEING PURSUED?

It is difficult to explain why these practical solutions are being neglected, except to say that the NBA, as presently constituted, appears to have lost focus. It has become reactive instead of proactive, performative rather than transformational. Dear NBA president, and NBA Branch Chairmen at all levels, let’s debate this issue: “What exactly is the NBA doing to expand legal practice opportunities beyond law firms, Ministries of Justice, and private legal departments?”

OTHER STRUCTURAL CHALLENGES:

Aside from the NBA’s inefficiencies, other key institutions within the legal profession also contribute to the stagnation of progress. These include the Body of Benchers (BoB), whose primary duty is to uphold the dignity and integrity of the profession but often appears too elitist and detached to be of practical usefulness to the profession and its disillusioned members;(ii) The General Council of The Bar; (iii) The Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN), which often projects exclusivity over inclusivity and appears indifferent to the challenges of younger practitioners.

CONCLUSION

1. The Growing Number of Lawyers Is Not a Challenge. On the contrary, we need more lawyers, but we must create the enabling environment for them to thrive. The United States has over 1.3 million lawyers for a population of 330 million; Nigeria has fewer than 200,000 lawyers for over 220 million people. The problem is not quantity, but quality, opportunity, and structure.

2. The Legal Profession Must Wake Up. We are currently at the bottom of the societal food chain, being pushed around by the very society we are trained to serve and lead. The choice before the NBA and all stakeholders is simple: either we run the system, or the system runs us into irrelevance. It is high time the NBA stopped acting like a spectator in a country where it is supposed to lead on matters of justice, governance, and institutional reform. Justice cannot be served by a profession in chains.

3. Further reading: “Abdication of Duty: How NBA Leaderships Chase After Shadows to the Detriment of the Security, Welfare and Economic Advancement of the Legal Profession and Its Members” By Sylvester Udemezue (published 07 April 2021); “60(sixty) Discussion Subjects NBA Conferences, Workshops and Seminars could Focus on in the Best Interest of Nigeria, the Legal Profession, and Lawyers in Nigeria”* By Sylvester Udemezue (published 12 September 2021).

4. To be clear, NBA is only a major problem, not the only problem. Leaders of the Judiciary and lawyers are major contributory factors to the decay that the legal profession in Nigeria has become. We’re our own problem.. Anyone blaming any external forces is chasing after shadows. The way you make your bed, so you must lie on it. The truth is, nothing will work unless lawyers do something. Lawyers in Nigeria need to wake up to their responsibilities! Time for the Bar, the Bench, and members of both the bar and the bench, to stand and fight to save the soul of the legal profession in Nigeria is now or never! There is no time to wait or waste; time will never be right. As Barack Obama put it, “the change we desire will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” If we fold our arms and do nothing to enlarge the scope of legal jobs with a view to leaving enough for lawyers in Nigeria, or if we continue to do things the way we have always done by continuing with our superficial approach, there might be little or no improvements and we would continue to get the same results as we have always got while the professions becomes the worse for it. A stitch in time saves nine

The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author and do not represent the opinion of CITY LAWYER or its publishers

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