Corruption and ethical failings are hampering the Nigerian Bar, according to the nation’s attorney general and minister of justice, who said that standards have dropped lower than in past decades.

Mohammed Bello Adoke – speaking at an alumni reunion of the Nigerian Law School – said the standard of the bar is declining and the quality of legal education in the country is also poor, reports Global Legal Post.

He said: ‘The underlining objective is to sensitise members of this noble profession to the need to uphold high ethical standards and discipline in the practice of law in the country.’

Patronage

Mr Adoke said the lack of professionalism shocks him, reports the Osun Defendernewspaper.

‘As Attorney General of the federation, I am astonished at the manner businessmen and women now approach my office for patronage,’ he said. ‘When I question them as to the impropriety of their conduct, they often answer to the effect that it has been done before and that they had in the past secured brief, which they handed over to other lawyers to handle on their behalf.’

The comments come less than a week after the death of Kayode Eso, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria who was described by former bar association president Olisa Agbakoba as ‘a colossus at the bar’.