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My colleague and very good friend, Waziri Adio, has a sense of humour that sometimes borders on the morbid. Shortly before we departed Lagos last Sunday on the first leg of ‘THISDAY Meets the Nation’ tour, he said: “If this aircraft crashes, THISDAY would be re-enacting the Zambia national soccer team tragedy scenario.” Mr. Victor Ifijeh (current Managing Director of The Nation newspaper) immediately scolded Waziri: “Why do you always think negatively?” Apparently, the editor of THISDAY, whom we all call Kabila in the newsroom, was not in a hurry to join his Congolese ‘namesake’ in the great beyond. He almost did.
The Keynote Address delivered last week by Funke Aboyade, SAN FCIArb, at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Ibadan Branch 2020 Law Week
âWe are this world. Its next generation. If youâre not trying to save us, then what exactly are you trying to save?â â Claudia Gray
Introduction
The topic is apt for these troubled times, as is the quote above. I hope to provoke, to engage, to challenge, to educate not just the audience but also myself, to ginger, to proffer solutions.
Questions, Questions
I begin with perhaps provocative questions. Why Lawyers as frontline advocates, what qualifies us? Put less politely, who do we think we are? Who really are the frontline advocates? Are we really the salt of the earth, as we like to think? Or have we lost our saltiness, no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot? This, after all, is a country where weâve gone from the days when people took off their shoes, tiptoed and spoke in whispers j