The air inside the hall was thick with expectation. Learned silks in flowing robes, young wigs eager to impress, and the weight of tradition hung over the Nigerian Bar Association’s 2025 Conference. It was meant to be another gathering where speeches would be given, pleasantries exchanged, and resolutions filed away into dusty archives. But then, like a stone thrown into a still pond, Oby Ezekwesili rose, and the hall shifted.
Her words did not flatter. They struck with the urgency of a fire alarm in the middle of the night. She asked the lawyers, the guardians of the nation’s constitution, to look into the mirror. Not to admire the silk of their gowns or the polish of their titles, but to examine the log in their own eyes. For too long, she said, they had been arbiters who excused their own failings while pointing at the speck in others.
It was not a comfortable charge. Lawyers shifted in their seats. Some frowned. Some applauded. But the truth was laid bare: the Nigerian legal profession, once the conscience of society, has too often dropped the ball.
Think of the 2023 elections, where brazen infractions were documented, yet the courts delivered rulings that raised more questions than answers. Or the endless adjournments that have turned justice into a waiting game, eroding faith in the very system lawyers swore to uphold. Think of the silence of many senior advocates when judicial corruption is whispered about, as though the temple of justice can stand while its pillars are rotting.
Ezekwesili’s charge was not merely to critique. It was a trumpet call. She asked them to confront the truth that Nigeria is where it is today because those who should have drawn the lines of accountability too often chose convenience over courage. Lawyers were once in the vanguard of change: the Gani Fawehinmis, the Alao-Aka-Bashors, the Akinola Agudases. Their names are etched in our collective memory because they fought when it was costly. But where is that spirit now?
The metaphor of the mirror is haunting. For what is a mirror if not a silent witness? It does not flatter or deceive. It simply reflects. The Nigerian Bar Association cannot continue as though it is an observer of the nation’s decline; it must admit that its silence, its compromises, its complicity have helped fertilize the soil of Nigeria’s failures.
And yet, in Ezekwesili’s provocation lies a possibility. To look into the mirror is not merely to mourn, but to begin again. To reclaim the nobility of the law not as a profession of prestige, but as a calling of service. To recover the conscience that once made lawyers the voice of the voiceless.
This is not about throwing stones at others. It is about removing the log in one’s own eye. For until the Bar confronts itself, it cannot hope to help Nigeria see clearly.
The question then lingers beyond the echoes of that hall: when next the mirror is held up, will the Nigerian Bar Association be able to stand and say, “We did not look away”?
