(CAUTION TO MY READERS: THIS IS A SERIOUS LEGAL DISCOURSE ON A MATTER OF PUBPIC INTEREST AND MAY NOT BE FOR EVERYONE!]
As Mayor of Fadeyi, I hardly delve into difficult jurisprudential discussions about whether the law is sometimes an ass — and, perhaps more dangerously, whether judges riding that particular ass might occasionally be perceived as ass riders themselves. 😂Those are dangerous conversations for a humble Mayor.
Mama Lati has repeatedly advised me to concentrate on potholes, streetlights and the general welfare of the Republic of Fadeyi. Ogbonna, on the other hand, insists that jurisprudence is everybody’s business once judges start making decisions that affect ordinary people.
Unfortunately, on this one, Ogbonna has won. 😎
The disciplinary proceedings involving Chief J.K. Gadzama SAN have intrigued me enormously.
I have actually followed Gadzama SAN’s career and some of his professional moves for years. I have always liked the man and, in truth, I am something of a fan.
Interestingly, I did not even know when he first caught my attention that we were graduates of the same Law School year. I had always assumed he was my senior at the Bar. So let me make something absolutely clear before anybody turns this into a commentary on Chief Gadzama himself:
I am NOT commenting on the merits or facts of the disciplinary allegations against Chief Gadzama SAN. I have profound respect for my learned colleague, and I have a natural reluctance to sit in judgment over the facts of a case of which I am not sufficiently seized.
I do not know enough about the underlying evidence to pronounce on whether the LPDC was right or wrong in finding professional misconduct.That is not my concern here.My concern is the law and the administration of justice surrounding professional discipline in Nigeria.
The Gadzama case is merely the fascinating — and frankly troubling — vehicle through which a much bigger problem has presented itself. Because somehow, through a combination of constitutional interpretation, statutory inadequacy and judicial intervention, we appear to have driven the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee into a legal cul-de-sac at precisely the historical moment when Nigeria ought to be strengthening professional discipline at the Bar.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, has provoked the Mayor of Fadeyi into a jurisprudential rant.
So here we go.
The Supreme Court in Mene-Ejegi v. NBA & LPDC held that the statutory route permitting a direct appeal from the LPDC to the Supreme Court was unconstitutional because Section 233 of the Constitution confines the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction to appeals emanating from the Court of Appeal.
That much is constitutionally intelligible. But look at what happened next.
The LPDC subsequently found Chief J.K. Gadzama SAN liable for professional misconduct and directed that he be suspended for three years.
Gadzama disputes those findings and was, of course, entitled to challenge them.
Then came the difficulty created by Mene-Ejegi:Where exactly was he supposed to appeal?The Federal High Court has now reportedly held that enforcing the LPDC’s decision against him without an effective appellate mechanism would violate constitutional guarantees and has restrained implementation of the disciplinary direction.
And THAT is where the Mayor of Fadeyi develops jurisprudential hypertension. 😂The maxim is: Ubi jus ibi remedium.Where there is a right, there must be a remedy.
But before I proceed, I must confess that “ubi jus ibi remedium” has always had a special place in my heart. 😂The first time I remember hearing anybody deploy that formidable Latin outside the classroom at Great Ife was during one of our legendary Student Union election disputes.
My brother and now lifelong friend, Leke Sanusi — Great Ife Moot Court SAN, as he then was 😂 — was appearing in a mock trial arising from the Student Union election results.
Today, Leke is an RCCG Overseer Pastor in Europe.
Somewhere along the journey, my learned brother apparently exchanged the wig and gown for the pastoral suit and decided that saving souls was safer than cross-examining witnesses.But back then?
Leke Sanusi was the Gani Fawehinmi of our campus.The hall was packed with more than 200 students, most of whom were not law students. The tribunal itself included perfectly respectable gentlemen studying things like Agriculture and Engineering who suddenly found themselves presiding over what Leke had apparently decided was the Supreme Court of Nigeria. 😂Then, during cross-examination, Leke turned dramatically to a witness and thundered:“I PUT IT TO YOU — UBI JUS IBI REMEDIUM!”The hall EXPLODED.Thunderous applause!People were shouting.Even those who had absolutely no idea what ubi jus ibi remedium meant knew immediately that Leke had just said something devastating. 😂Never mind that it was a legal maxim rather than a factual proposition to be “put” to a witness. Never mind that the poor witness could neither admit nor deny that where there is a right there must be a remedy.That was completely beside the point.Latin had entered the building and everywhere was hot!
And once Leke started throwing Latin maxims up and down that hall, the rest of us simply surrendered.
The Agriculture and Engineering members of the tribunal looked suitably judicial.The audience looked suitably impressed.The witness looked suitably confused. And even those of us who were actually studying Law and knew better were clapping furiously!Including me. 😂What did you expect me to do? Object? No now. My brother was cooking! And Leke was extraordinarily eloquent even then. He could make res ipsa loquitur sound like newly discovered evidence and audi alteram partem sound like the name of the principal suspect. By the time he finished, he won the case for his student client and we carried our Great Ife Moot Court SAN shoulder-high out of the hall like he had just returned from winning a constitutional case at the Supreme Court.Those were glorious days. And since then, ubi jus ibi remedium has never been merely a Latin maxim to me. It is a little snapshot of my life at Great Ife.Whenever I hear it, somewhere in my head I can still see Leke Sanusi standing before that Student Union tribunal, holding hundreds of us spellbound with beautifully delivered — and occasionally completely irrelevant — Latin maxims while bewildered Agriculture and Engineering students solemnly administered justice. 😂Leke remains my ride-or-die brother to this day.
So perhaps I should blame him for what follows. Because some four decades later, another invocation of ubi jus ibi remedium has brought me back to court — except this time the issue is far more serious. And this time I am not clapping.The maxim remains: Ubi jus ibi remedium. Where there is a right, there must be a remedy.Beautiful principle. I agree completely. But now the Mayor of Fadeyi has one inconvenient question:WHOSE RIGHT AND WHOSE REMEDY? Surely Gadzama’s rights matter. A lawyer facing the devastating professional consequence of suspension must have an effective mechanism for challenging an erroneous disciplinary decision. Absolutely. But there is another interest sitting quietly in the courtroom which seems to have disappeared from this jurisprudential conversation:THE RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION TO DISCIPLINE ITS MEMBERS AND PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT.
The LPDC does not exist merely to punish lawyers.It exists to protect the integrity of the profession, the administration of justice and, ultimately, the Nigerian public.
Therefore, if there is a constitutional defect in the appellate architecture, the intellectually satisfying question ought to be: How do we preserve BOTH the lawyer’s right to challenge disciplinary findings AND the profession’s ability to discipline its members? Instead, we appear to have arrived at the extraordinary situation where a defect in the machinery for reviewing discipline threatens to disable the machinery of discipline itself.That strikes me as jurisprudentially upside down.
Now, there is an argument I initially considered but ultimately rejected. One might ask:Why couldn’t the Federal High Court simply assume appellate jurisdiction over LPDC decisions? The answer, upon reflection, is that it cannot.
Jurisdiction is donated by the Constitution or statute. A court cannot manufacture appellate jurisdiction merely because justice requires somebody, somewhere, to hear an appeal. That would simply replace one constitutional problem with another.
Indeed, Section 240 of the Constitution provides the mechanism by which the National Assembly may prescribe appeals from other tribunals to the Court of Appeal. Fair enough. But that makes the present outcome even more troubling. Because if the Federal High Court possesses sufficient supervisory jurisdiction to entertain judicial review and issue certiorari, why should the absence of a statutory appeal necessarily mean that an otherwise competent professional disciplinary body becomes incapable of producing an enforceable decision?
Appeal and judicial review are not the same thing. That distinction matters enormously. Judicial review exists precisely because administrative and quasi-judicial bodies routinely make consequential decisions without necessarily sitting within the conventional appellate hierarchy.
So protect Gadzama’s right to judicial review. Examine whether the LPDC acted within its jurisdiction. Examine whether he received fair hearing. Examine whether there was procedural irregularity. Examine whether there was an error of law or some other reviewable defect. And if the LPDC acted unlawfully, quash the decision. That is what judicial review is for. But I honestly struggle enormously with the proposition that because the legislature failed to provide an effective appellate route, the disciplinary authority itself must effectively become paralysed.
That risks converting a legislative omission into something dangerously close to professional immunity.
And therein lies my fundamental objection. Justice is not simply about protecting the person standing before the disciplinary tribunal. Justice must also protect the institution, the profession and the society whose standards that institution exists to defend.
Let us remove Chief Gadzama entirely from the hypothetical.Suppose tomorrow an ordinary lawyer is found, after proper proceedings, to have converted a client’s money. Another lawyer deliberately deceives a client. Another abandons a client’s case after collecting substantial fees. Another repeatedly engages in conduct bringing the profession into disrepute.
If the LPDC properly investigates, hears those cases and imposes discipline, are we seriously suggesting that those sanctions cannot operate because the National Assembly has failed to repair the appellate architecture?
If 100 lawyers are properly found guilty of serious professional misconduct, does the entire disciplinary machinery grind to a halt?
Surely that cannot sensibly become the permanent meaning of ubi jus ibi remedium. Otherwise we have transformed:“Where there is a right, there must be a remedy” into: “Where there is no appeal, there can be no discipline.” And that would be disastrous for any self-regulating profession. Even Mama Lati understands that one. If the Fadeyi Market Disciplinary Committee catches Ogbonna carrying away everybody’s Christmas goats, Ogbonna certainly deserves the right to complain that the committee treated him unfairly. But surely the solution cannot be to announce that nobody in Fadeyi can ever be disciplined again until somebody builds Ogbonna an appellate court. 😂There must be a more intellectually coherent solution.The Supreme Court was entitled to confront an unconstitutional statutory appellate route. But when judicial interpretation removes a structural pillar from an established disciplinary architecture, the resulting institutional consequences cannot simply be somebody else’s problem. And that is where I believe the Nigerian justice system has let society down. Not because Gadzama should necessarily have been punished.
Again, I express NO VIEW whatsoever on whether the LPDC’s findings against him were correct. Perhaps they were.Perhaps they were not.
That is precisely why we need a functioning review and appellate architecture.The failure lies in allowing the system to reach a position where we apparently have to choose between: protecting a lawyer from potentially wrongful discipline and allowing the Bar to discipline lawyers at all. That is a false choice.
A mature legal system should comfortably accomplish both. The constitutional solution now seems obvious. REPAIR THE APPELLATE ARCHITECTURE.
Create a constitutionally valid route from LPDC disciplinary decisions to the Court of Appeal, with whatever further appellate rights the Constitution permits. And do it urgently.Because this issue is much bigger than Chief J.K. Gadzama SAN.
Nigeria desperately needs a Bar whose disciplinary institutions have teeth. Senior Advocates deserve due process. Junior lawyers deserve due process. Every lawyer accused of professional misconduct deserves due process. But the Nigerian Bar also deserves a disciplinary system capable of enforcing its ethical standards.
The public deserves lawyers who know that professional rules actually mean something. And the administration of justice deserves a system capable of simultaneously protecting lawyers from wrongful punishment and protecting society from lawyers properly found to have committed professional misconduct.
A justice system worthy of the name should be sophisticated enough to do both. When procedural justice for one person produces institutional paralysis for everybody else, something has gone badly wrong. That is not ubi jus ibi remedium functioning at its finest.That is a remedy threatening to swallow the very institution whose integrity the law was supposed to protect.
And in a profession where Senior Advocates should ordinarily represent the highest examples of professional discipline, leadership and etiquette, rather than become accidental beneficiaries of gaps in our disciplinary architecture, every serious Nigerian lawyer should be concerned.
So, with profound respect to Chief Gadzama SAN — whom I continue to admire — my quarrel is not with him.If there is a legal opening available to defend his professional career, his lawyers are absolutely entitled to use it.
My quarrel is with a legal system that created the opening, discovered the opening, enlarged the opening — and somehow left the Bar standing beside it wondering how it is supposed to discipline anybody. It can here my ever vigilant Aunty Mosun who is always watching my excesses shouting that I should stop here before the Mayor gets cited for contempt or she herself gives me a serious ‘abara’ for too much ayonuso since I don’t know gen practice law in Nigeria and can’t be disciplined myself by LSDPC for talking nonsense. 🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️😂
So I will off the mic here. But the principle remains: Justice must protect the lawyer from the disciplinary institution. Justice must ALSO protect the profession and society from the erring lawyer. Anything less is not complete justice. It is jurisprudence with one eye closed.
Every life MUST matter in Nigeria but the institutions to keep us civilized must also matter.
— Dr Ope BanwoMayor of Fadeyi 😎⚖️Founder, Naija Lives Matter
