The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has been charged with investigating and applying the sledgehammer against persons who paraded themselves as lawyers during a recent campaign against the immediate past group chief executive officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Engr. Mele Kyari.
The suspected lawyers were accused of calumny and blackmail against Kyari in Abuja over alleged corruption.
The coalition leaders coordinated by the empowerment for Unemployed Youth (EUYI) and led by Comrades Solomon Adodo, Danesi Momohs, and Igwe Ude-umanta appealed in a petition to the NBA yesterday.
At a press conference in Abuja, the trio said they had written a petition to the NBA president to probe into the status of five lawyers (names withheld) who claimed to be group leaders, which has a numerical strength of 500.
EUYI described the “so-called lawyers” as an amorphous group that has carefully created ambiguity by claiming to be leaders of a group of lawyers and a coalition of civil society groups. Thus, they give the impression that all those involved in their activities are lawyers while building an alibi, and that some are just members of civil society.
“We suspect that some of them may not even be lawyers. And if they are, we contend that their activities are unethical. It should come under your scrutiny,” EUYI said in the petition to the NBA.
Adodo particularly expressed concern that such a group of lawyers went out of their way to call for the trial of Kyari, who has yet to be investigated.
He noted that strangely, after some civil society groups questioned the tactics employed by these so-called concerned citizens and challenged them as doing a hatchet job, the convener (name withheld) made a volte-face by retracting his statement, disowning his petition to the attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, and apologising subsequently.
EUYI claimed that a preliminary investigation showed that these persons were hired to use the high calling of the legal profession to blackmail Engr. Kyari, tainting him with criminality.
They added that these protests had resulted in a media trial and whipped up negative public sentiment against him.
The coalition requested that the NBA investigate the status and operations of the so-called lawyers and their group.