By Sylvester Udemezue

MEMORY VERSE:

 “You cannot truly help others unless you first help yourself. Neglecting self-care leads to imbalance, and just like a tree that refuses water and sunlight cannot bear fruit, you cannot give what you do not have. Self-care is not selfish; it is essential. You cannot serve from an empty vessel. Loving yourself first increases your joy, balance, and capacity to love, enabling you to give more freely to others. Even in emergencies, the rule is clear: put your own mask on first. Only when you are whole and well can you meaningfully support and uplift other”

• INTRODUCTION:On 21 August 2025, a news report emerged with the headline: “Release Osun LG Funds, You Have No Power To Withhold Allocations – NBA To Tinubu.” The statement by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) urging President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to release Osun State’s allegedly withheld local government funds immediately sparked mixed reactions. At first glance, the intervention might appear noble. But on closer scrutiny, it exposes a deeper, recurring problem that has plagued the NBA for years: its penchant for chasing shadows, indulging in political grandstanding, and issuing statements that achieve little or nothing, while neglecting the pressing realities confronting its own members.

• ABDICATION OF CORE RESPONSIBILITY: The NBA is, first and foremost, a professional association. Its raison d’êtreis the promotion of the welfare, security, professional advancement, and economic empowerment of Nigerian lawyers. It was not established to serve as a political pressure group or a general-purpose commentator on every national issue. Unfortunately, successive NBA leaderships have consistently abdicated this core responsibility, preferring instead to chase relevance in political discourse. This is not a new concern. In my essay “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” (2021), I highlighted this same tragic pattern: leaderships, past and present, expend more energy on issuing press statements and dabbling in external matters while leaving their own members to languish in frustration, poverty, unemployment, and professional stagnation. Even earlier, in *“Bar Associations and the Sad Story of Nigerian Lawyers”* (2017), I observed that the tragedy of the Nigerian legal profession is closely tied to this attitude of neglect.

• The Osun funds matter provides a clear example. Has the Osun State Government itself exhausted all constitutional and judicial avenues to enforce its rights? Does it lack the machinery or resources to defend its own interests? Why should the NBA, a professional body, rush in as a crusader to fight another’s battle while its own constituency is collapsing? In advocacy, it is trite that one cannot help someone who has refused to help himself. Worse still, this choice of battle raises a disturbing question: between the withholding of Osun’s allocations and the fact that more than seventy percent of Nigerian lawyers, particularly young lawyers, are unemployed, underemployed, frustrated, and disillusioned, which is the more pressing concern for the NBA? Why should the Association rise swiftly in defence of a state government that has not acted decisively for itself, while ignoring the existential plight of its own members?

• NBA’S ENDLESS PRESS RELEASES: SOUND WITHOUT SUBSTANCE: The NBA knows what to do if it genuinely intends to see the funds released. It could initiate or support constitutional litigation, file amicus briefs, or create institutional pressure within the bounds of law. Instead, it chooses the convenient route: issuing yet another press statement, only to move on to the next issue the following week. Over the past year, this has become the NBA’s trademark: thriving on statements, communiqués, and press releases, while recording very little in terms of tangible outcomes. Indeed, the Association increasingly resembles a body more interested in appearances than in results, more concerned with grabbing headlines than with delivering real change. The bitter irony is that while the NBA projects itself as a crusader for national governance, the very constituency that sustains it, lawyers paying dues, is languishing in despair.

• THE CONTRAST: NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION (NBA) VERSUS NGERIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (NMA): The striking difference between the NBA and its counterpart, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), underscores the tragedy.

1. Focus on Members’ Welfare:The NMA dedicates over 99% of its initiatives to the welfare, professional growth, and working conditions of doctors and other healthcare providers. In contrast, the NBA devotes most of its energy to external political commentary, neglecting its members’ needs.

1. Relevance of Conference Themes:The NMA’s 2025 Annual Conference bore the theme: “The Universal Applicability of Care Standards for Patients and the Wellbeing of Healthcare Providers.” This theme reflects a clear inward focus: how to improve professional standards while safeguarding doctors’ welfare. Meanwhile, the NBA paraded the vague and uninspiring theme: “Stand Out, Stand Tall.” Devoid of professional direction, the theme reflects the NBA’s current identity crisis and lack of purpose.

1. Programme Content:At the NMA Conference, more than 90% of sessions addressed professional practice, medical ethics, members’ welfare, and health sector challenges. At the NBA’s own conference, more than 80% of sessions focused on matters with little or no relevance to the practice of law, lawyers’ welfare, or economic empowerment.

1. Advocacy Priorities: When the NMA advocates for reforms, it does so by tying them to improvements in healthcare delivery and the welfare of healthcare providers. The NBA, however, too often comments on national politics without linking such interventions to the economic survival or professional dignity of lawyers.

1. Professional Development Initiatives:The NMA consistently pushes for better working conditions, improved remuneration, and sustainable professional support for doctors. By contrast, the NBA has failed to design comparable programmes for lawyers, leaving many struggling practitioners without institutional support in a shrinking legal services market.

1. Responsibility to Members: The NMA understands that charity begins at home. Its leadership makes clear that its first duty is to its members. The NBA leadership, on the other hand, behaves as though charity begins abroad, expending its limited energy on political commentary while its members languish in neglect.

• This contrast is not coincidental. It is a reflection of two professional bodies with two different senses of duty; one focused on its members, the other distracted by external grandstanding.

• A SAD STORY REPEATED: The Nigerian legal profession, once respected and influential, is now struggling for relevance. Lawyers roam the streets in search of nonexistent jobs. Many law firms are shutting their doors. Young lawyers are disillusioned and leaving the profession altogether. Yet, the NBA’s attention is elsewhere. This is the same sad story I chronicled in 2017 and 2021, and it continues unabated in 2025. Other professional associations are evolving strategies to shield their members from hardship, but the NBA is content to make headlines. If nothing changes, the Association risks becoming a body famous for “sound and fury, signifying little,” while its members, who sustain it with dues and loyalty, sink deeper into neglect and despair.

• THE WAY FORWARD: The NBA must urgently reorder its priorities. Its leadership must return to first principles; recognizing that its primary duty is to lawyers, not to state governments or political actors.

• CONCRETE STEPS ARE NEEDED:

1. Design policies to tackle unemployment and underemployment among lawyers, particularly young practitioners.

1. Establish practical support systems such as mentorship programmes, practice start-up grants, and realistic and free continuing professional development (CPD) tailored to practice realities.

1. Advocate for better and  impregnable remuneration standards, learning from how the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria has consistently intervened to secure doctors’ welfare.

1. Refocus annual conferences on substantive issues: legal education, law practice, welfare and economic advancement of lawyers in Nigeria, improved access to justice, advocacy and programmes for accelerated justice delivery, practice management, regulatory reforms, and lawyers’ dignity, etc., rather than vague motivational slogans.

1. Tie every intervention on national issues back to its impact on lawyers’ welfare and the legal profession. If NBA must intervene in governance, it should always ask: how does this affect our members?

1. Until this reorientation happens, the NBA will remain guilty of abdication of duty, and its leaders will continue to be perceived as out of touch with the everyday realities of Nigerian lawyers.

1. CONCLUSION: The Osun local government funds saga is not, in itself, unimportant. But it is not the NBA’s most pressing mandate. The Association was not created to act as a substitute government for states unwilling to fight their own battles. Its sacred duty is to its members: their welfare, empowerment, and professional survival. The Nigerian Medical Association has shown what focus looks like. The NBA must take a cue: charity begins at home. If the NBA truly wishes to “stand tall,” it must first stand with its own members. Until then, its endless press statements will remain little more than public posturing, sound without substance, shadows without substance, while the real crises of Nigerian lawyers fester unattended.

Respectfully,

Sylvester Udemezue, Udems,

Proctor, The Reality Ministry of Truth, Law, and Justice (TRM).

08021365545.

udems@therealityministry.ngo.

www.therealityministry.ngo

(22 August 2025)