By Jefferson Uwoghiren
Alloy Ejimofor
Lawyers generally enjoy constitutional protection for two kinds of speech. Like everyone else, though with at least two important exceptions, Lawyers can criticise government, including the courts and judges, and speak about public issues, subject to such narrow limitations professional rules of practice will permit.
One notable exception, is that a lawyer enjoys less freedom than others to speak publicly about his or her own cases. But not when it involves solidarity marches and protests for his client. The conducts of lawyers and the limit of their professional duties is the kennel of the alarming accusation by the Presidency yesterday against the lawyer of Mr Nnamdi Kanu and his subsequent arrest by the police for his presence at a scene in Abuja, where protesters were marching peacefully demanding the release of Mr Kanu. The statement from the Presidency and the police action is obviosly a culmination of undisguised hostility towards the lawyer for having the temerity to represent a person the government have since prosecuted and convicted in the court of public opinions.
This is a deeply concerning assault on our adversarial legal system and the rights to legal representations. No matter the severity of the allegations or the repugnancy of the case, an accused person remains innocent until the courts rule otherwise. Any lawyer who knows his onions on his suya knows that there’s no good or bad case, until the final determination of the case.
Thus, the first great duty of an advocate or lawyer is to reckon or do everything legally possible in the interests of his client. In the discharge of his professional duties a lawyer knows but one person in the whole of the world and that person is his client, even if it requires encouraging protests or protesters who are in sympathy with his client’s interests or speaking to the press to clarify the allegations against his client. This is similar in reality and desperation in capital offences, to when government determinedly provide the judge, prosecutor, and free turncoat indolent defence counsels for accused persons it is determined to waste. A trinity of conspiracy and collusion against indigent and poor citizens.
To Bayo Onanuga and other moral, ethics schizophrenics, a lawyer’s representation of a client including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of his client’s political, economic, social, or moral views. Arresting lawyers or making moral judgements about lawyers because of the identity of their clients will inevitably impede access to justice and the availability of lawyers for political dissents in the coming days.
Uwoghiren Esq is a lawyer based in
Benin City
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