The Resident Electoral Commissioner for Osun State, Dr Mutiu Agboke, has called on the Nigeria Bar Association to step up monitoring and fight against the menace of fake lawyers.
Agboke has equally said that anyone who is desirous of making success out of the law profession must be ready to be studious, saying that lawyers were not just referred to as learned members of the public for the fun of it.
The REC disclosed this while speaking at the annual law dinner for the College of Law students of Chrisland University, Abeokuta.
Agboke, while speaking on the theme, ‘Pathway to a Successful Legal Career’, told the students that “central to achieving success in the law profession is anchored on readiness and ability to study and shun other forms of distractions.
“Many issues of fake lawyers are linked to those who either dropped out of their law programmes or could not pass at the Law School, and until you pass your exams at the Law School, you can’t be called to bar or practice. If you do, you are a fake lawyer and the law will deal with you.
“Read more materials relevant to your courses. Do more research at your convenience, study cases cited in your lecture notes and be prepared as if every lecture hour is for test or examination.
“Do not allow anything to diminish your CGPA. You must always improve on it at each semester. You can achieve it. You will achieve it. No one was born genius or with brilliance. You must work to achieve it”.
To deal with the prevalence of fake lawyers, Agboke said, “The NBA must step up its monitoring activities like never before. It must spare no effort to bring them to book because fake lawyers are like quack surgeons, just like how quack surgeons will be sending people to their early grave, fake lawyers too will just be throwing people into jail, and giving the noble profession bad image.”
The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof Chinedum Babalola, said the university would spare nothing to make products of its College of Law the best in the country.
Prof Babalola said the Law College, though the most recently accredited college in the institution had appeared to be “very promising”, urging the law students to fasten their seat belts for a rigorous but exciting academic journey that would shape them to be legal luminaries across the globe.
