Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good day.
I believe that for this topic, the time has come for us to speak plainly. Justice and governance in our nation must move beyond grand speeches and eloquent statements.
For too long, we have been a country fluent in the language of reform but almost silent in its practice. We draft policies and hold summits, we pass resolutions but the poor still cry, the innocent still languish and the powerful still walk in arrogance.
The Bar must be the conscience that refuses to be scripted.
We cannot be mere spectators in the national drama, we are its moral compass.
When governance strays from fairness, it is to the Bar that the people look for strength. The wig and gown we adorn are not ornaments of privilege but symbols of duty. We must speak truth where others whisper, and demand accountability where others have been bought into silence. For if the Bar sleeps, the Bench slumbers and when both do, justice is in a lifelong coma.
We joke that justice in Nigeria travels at the speed of a snail, but the truth is, it only moves as fast as our integrity allows. Governance cannot be just when lawyers are timid, nor can justice be swift when lawyers are complicit. We must therefore reject the comfort of legal technicalities that serve the letter but strangle the spirit.
Justice is a heartbeat and Governance is trust. The true mandate of the Bar is to keep that heart beating, to keep that trust sacred. It is to remind those in power that authority without accountability is an illusion, and to remind ourselves that advocacy without integrity is a betrayal.
In moments of reflection, we must ask: when history calls our generation of lawyers to the witness stand, what will our testimony be? Did we defend justice, or did we merely debate it? Did we advance governance, or did we adorn its failures with impeccable grammar? The answers will not be written in our speeches, but in the lives we touched and the systems we refused to corrupt.
Governance beyond rhetoric is not achieved by eloquence but by practical examples and justice beyond rhetoric is practiced not proclaimed. So let the Bar rise again, not as a guild of professionals but as a brotherhood of patriots. Let us leave this hall with conviction in our hearts that we will not only talk about justice, we will live it.
Let it be said of the Nigerian Bar, that when justice trembled, we stood firm, when governance staggered, we spoke the truth and when history turned its page, we were found on the side of right, on the side of the people.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!
God bless the Nigerian Bar Association!
God bless NBA, Eket Branch!
