A new gazette by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), which supposedly weakens the powers of the Nigerian Bar Association has caused division among some Senior Advocates of Nigeria and lawyers in the country.

Malami had amended the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners 2007, removing the requirement for the NBA stamp and seal on court processes.

Before now, membership of the NBA was 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. This also implies that persons who are not members of the NBA, including non-lawyers, are allowed to submit court processes.

The development occurred less than a week after a splinter group known as the New NBA, wrote a petition to Malami asking to be recognised by the Federal Government.

The gazette – marked S.I N0.15 of 2020 issued by AGF and dated September 3, 2020, which was obtained by Sunday PUNCH – reads in part, “In exercise of the powers conferred on me by section 12(4) of the Legal Practitioners Act Cap L11, LFN 2004 and of all other powers enabling me in that behalf, I, Abubakar Malami, SAN, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice and President, General Council of the Bar, make the following rules:

“The Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners, 2007 is amended by deleting the following rules, namely: 9(2), 10, 11, 12 and 13.

“These rules may be cited as the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners (Amendment) Rules, 2020.”

The NBA had become factionalised last month following the decision of the association to withdraw its invitation to Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, who had been billed to speak at its Annual General Conference.

Thousands of persons, mostly lawyers, had called on the NBA to rescind its invitation to El-Rufai, who was accused of several cases of human rights abuse and being unable to address the killings in southern Kaduna.

Following the decision of the NBA to rescind its invitation to the governor, several northern branches of the NBA boycotted the conference and interpreted the act as one based on religious and tribal considerations.

A group of mostly northern lawyers led by Nuhu Ibrahim and Abdulbasit Suleiman subsequently set up the New NBA, otherwise known as the NNBA, and wrote a letter to the AGF asking the nation’s chief law officer to recognise the splinter group as a new association.

However, while some senior advocates and lawyers described Malami’s action as illegal, others disagreed.