Lawyers working to remove Malami of SAN title

Trouble is brewing for Nigeria’s
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN) as he risks been removed of his Senior Advocate of Nigeria for alledged professional misconduct.

In a petition against Abubakar Malami by Barrister Izu Aniagu on change.org has on received 362 signatures wanting Malami’s SAN’ship removed.

The petitioner alledged that the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice unilaterally deleted the provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct, RPC, which provides for stamp and seal as well as bar practice fee for government lawyers, saying that he lacks such power.

Malami’s ordeals stemmed from the purported amendment of RPC for legal practitioners, 2007 where the requirement for the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, stamp and seal on court processes was removed.

The amendment which has been gazetted abolished abolished the requirement of payment of annual practice fees by government lawyers.

Membership of the NBA has been compulsory for all lawyers and the stamps and seals were sold at N4,000 for 72 pieces and were given upon payment of NBA dues.

Without the stamp, a lawyer could not submit any document or letter to the court and the sale of the stamp and seal was one of the major sources of NBA’s revenue.

However, with the amendment of the process by Malami, the use of the stamps is no longer necessary.

The explanatory note to the instrument suggested that it was done to bring the RPC into conformity with the provisions of the Legal Practitioners Act, the Law Officers Act, and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).

This is the second time the AGF will be facing attempts to strip him of his title.

In July 2019, Malami was reported to have agreed to appear before the disciplinary panel of the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee to face two petitioners seeking to strip him of the title for alleged misconduct.

A petition was filed against him by some family members of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, while another one was filed against him by a firm ‘Interstellar’.