Re-establishing The Waning Magnificence of the SAN Title By Odiawa Ai

Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, last Monday administered the oath of office to 87 legal counsellors elevated to the position of the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).

The rank SAN is issued by the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) as a symbol of excellence to members of the legal profession who have distinguished themselves as advocates and academics. Members of the Inner Bar, as SANs are usually called, enjoy some honours, including having seats set aside for them in the front rows of all courts and furthermore with priority given to their cases in courts. They are likewise discernable from other attorneys by their legal regalia known as ‘silk,’ which is styled uniquely in contrast to the outfit as other lawyers wear.

The LPPC had in July named 98 lawyers for the conferment of SAN rank this year. Among the rundown were 87 practicing attorneys and 11 academic applicants.

Nonetheless, numerous legal specialists have raised worries over the new conditions for attorneys aiming to attain the rank.

The worries arose in light of the fact that the number of attorneys being churned out by the LPPC for the award continues to bulge, while the quality continues to drop.

Despite the fact that LPPC in 2022 announced that the application for SAN rank would be a non-refundable processing fee of N600,000, news sources gathered that the sum has since been reviewed to N1million.

This has got tongues wagging among attorneys who discredited what they called the “commercialization” and “politicization” of the bar’s most elevated privilege, which is like the United Kingdom’s rank at the inner bar known as the Queen’s Counsel (QC).

While people have various perspectives on the rank, contingent upon which side of the divide they stand, some demand it is abolished totally as they consider it an unreasonable trade practice to confer unique privileges on specific individuals by way of ranking. Others accept that it is good to empower healthy competition, but that a ton of reform is expected to make it more merit-based.

Attorneys, who spoke to journalists, said the award of the rank of SAN should be founded on demonstrated integrity by individuals who had developed the hard work and legal abilities required. They lamented that the way the award is being conferred now comes up short.

A few of the attorneys who did not need their names in print called for a review of the guidelines for the award of the esteemed rank. They wept over the immense sums required in applying for the rank.

“N1,000,000 is just the amount, when the committee comes to inspect the offices of applicants and their libraries, they do get much more than that,” said an attorney.

Beginning around 2019, Nigeria had just 526 senior advocates with the first two being the late Chief Rotimi Williams and Dr. Nabo Graham-Douglas who were conferred with the rank on April 3, 1975. As of present, SANs are over 1,100.

Onlookers accept that with the huge number of SANs being churned out every year, the rank has not only lost quality and worth, however, that the number of those holding the rank would be more than the number of ordinary attorneys in no far off future.

“The prestigious award has been bastardized and compromised. It is losing its value and quality because it is now given to all Tom, Dick and Harry. Like every other thing, it is now given to the highest bidders. It has also been tribalized and based on quota, and this has reduced the prestige attached to the rank,” a SAN told journalists.

“I think for a moment that if there was a qualifying exam to become a SAN, do you think we would have numerous them like we have today? How many consultants and specialists do we have in the medical and other fields today? Of course, they are all few. You know why? Because they write very rigorous examinations. But to become a SAN, there are no exams,” another SAN said.

Indeed, even the sharp expansion in the number of senior advocates has not gone down well with the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN). After the release of the rundown of attorneys shortlisted for the rank in 2020, BOSAN penned down a letter to the then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, encouraging him not to promote any attorney to the esteemed rank until 2024 to empower them to revamp the elevation cycle.

BOSAN censured the making of a mockery of the elevation cycle with the conferment of the rank on an extraordinary number of 72 senior attorneys in the 2020 exercise. It cautioned that except if an all encompassing review of the cycle was embraced by the LPPC, the rank stood the gamble of losing its eminence and standing among partners.

BOSAN promised the commitment of its members to giving its knowledge and support at every phase of the review cycle.

In any case, this alarm was overlooked as the number of SANs continues to rise.

In 2021, the Supreme Court placed what should be new obstacles for legal counsellors looking to be conferred with the rank

Among others, the applicants were to encounter a panel of selected serving and retired Supreme Court justices and senior attorneys for an oral interview as a component of the last leg of the screening cycle. During the oral interview, the applicants were to be exposed to thorough cross-examination to ascertain and confirm the legitimacy of claims made in their singular application forms.

But journalists gathered that the selection cycle is still plagued with influence-peddling, nepotism, bigotry, and bribery, among others.

Recently, a retiring justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Addu Aboki, had approached the CJN and the LPPC to review the requirements for the conferment of the rank in a way that it would reduce pointless tension on the court.

He affirmed the unnecessary tension mounted on justices of the Supreme Court by lawyers looking for the rank.

Likewise, another retired Justice of the Supreme Court recently credited the congestion of the docket of the appellate courts to the quest by attorneys seeking SAN elevation.

As of now, every candidate who wants to be elevated to SAN is expected to have at least five concluded judgments of the Court of Appeal and four closed judgments of the Supreme Court.

Out of desperation, it is presently accepted that attorneys fund appeals and even resurrect lifeless ones in order to secure the minimum number of judgments to ground their application for elevation.

To this end, many are proposing that the LPPC ought to raise the qualification for SAN to 15 or 20 years post-call.

In 2022, Mr. Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN), tabled some broad changes to both the Supreme Court and LPPC.

As indicated by him, the legal disputes to be depended upon to select successful applicants ought to cut across numerous areas of legal practice, including, civil cases for instance laws covering land, cases involving chieftains, commercial law cases, election petitions, matrimonial cases, constitutional law, criminal cases and other areas of law.

“We should not have a Senior Advocate who only conducted election petitions or one who only attended to NDLEA or EFCC cases with only one witness who pleaded guilty and was summarily convicted or those who handled only political cases. How do we have a SAN who cannot conduct a criminal trial? In the same vein, the cases should cover all the superior courts of records, such as the High Court, Federal High Court and the National Industrial Court and indeed the appellate courts,” he explained.

He additionally said: “Why should a law teacher apply for the rank of SAN if he has never practiced and has no intention to ever practice law? This does not derogate from the value of law teachers, but that career path is totally different from courtroom advocacy. Law teachers who also practice law as advocates should only apply for the rank as advocates.

“For all categories of awardees, none should be considered for the rank if he/she is not an active member of the sections of the NBA, has not attended at least five consecutive meetings of his local NBA and provided concrete evidence of active participation in NBA affairs,” he added.

Examiners expect the new CJN, Justice Kekere-Ekun, to restore sanity to the selection cycle to the rank’s waning magnificence.