The Lagos State branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), has started its annual Law Week programme which began on 18 March as part of its efforts to celebrate the body of bar and bench and its contributions to national development.
The week began with a Jumat Service for the Muslim faithful of the NBA, Lagos branch, while the Christian lawyers had a Thanksgiving Service on Sunday, 20 March, at Good News Baptist Church, Surulere, Lagos, to pray for the good of the nation.
Speaking with LM after the Thanksgiving Service at Good News Baptist Church, Surulere, on Sunday, the Chairman, NBA Lagos Branch, Ikechukwu Uwanna, said the programme had been successful so far.
Throwing light on the law week, Uwanna said:
“The law week is a weeklong intellectual, spiritual and charity harvest of the Nigeria Bar Association Lagos Branch. It is an event that has happened over the years, which is focused on making sure that lawyers are all-round prepared for the year and all-round prepared for the hard work they are doing.”
He continued, “They always say that the morning says how the day will look like. So far, we have had a very wonderful outing. The build-up has been quite good. We had a press conference on Friday. Then, we had an opening cocktail. Our Muslim brothers had their prayers on Friday and it went very well. Yesterday we had a very good health-walk which also went very well. There was no casualty, we had a lot of very senior members of our branch, walk about 5-6 kilometres and we were very happy that everybody was fit enough to go through that rigour. We also had a football tournament and we were very happy that our branch won. We won 3-2 against the bankers that we played against.”
The theme of the law week is Law and Order and Democracy, Law and Order Shaping the Future.
He explained that the theme was chosen “to set the stage for the 2023 elections and the issues around having good governance in Nigeria.”
“We are all Nigerians, and we believe that the progress of this country would mean the progress of the Nigerian Bar Association, not just of Lagos Branch. We hope that if we have good governance and good democracy in place, and we have rule of law; that the issues around insecurity that we talk about would not happen. So, this is a point where we are looking at how we can have good governance so that there will be peace in our country and there would be progress and there will be respect for rule of law.” He said.
The Chairman said the branch was ready to participate in the political process leading to the elections in 2023.
“We’ve set up a committee for the first time -an election sensitisation and monitoring committee – which would, in the build-up of the election, monitor whatever is happening and speak out to ensure that we have free and fair elections; that the votes of individuals count; that the votes of our members count; that the outcome of that election is a shadow, is a representation – a true representation of the will of the Nigerian people. So we are going to be very active and we are going to ensure that the votes of the Nigerian people count.”
