SPIDEL: A Banner Without Stain, or a Banner Stained by an inordinate Quest for Power? SPIDEL 2025 Elections by Dr. Anne Agi
There is a special irony when those who preach purity are the very ones who soil the altar.
The 2025 SPIDEL Conference adopted the lofty theme “A Banner Without Stain.” It was not a casual slogan. It was repeatedly invoked from the highest places. In his address at the conference, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mazi Afam Josiah Osigwe, SAN, urged lawyers to lift high a banner without stain, calling on the profession to embody integrity, fairness, and respect for due process. In the same spirit, the Chairman of the SPIDEL Caretaker Committee, Prof. Paul Ananaba SAN, echoed this call in his welcome address, reminding members that SPIDEL must stand apart as the conscience of the Bar.
To reinforce this moral charge, the organisers invited Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, a fiery public intellectual and relentless critic of abuse of power, to deliver the keynote address. His presence symbolised resistance to arbitrariness, insistence on accountability, and fidelity to the rule of law. The message was unmistakable. SPIDEL was presenting itself as a beacon, a section unwilling to compromise principles for convenience.
Yet, the events that unfolded around the SPIDEL elections in Uyo cast a long and troubling shadow over these lofty declarations. Members of the section who had indicated interest in various offices and had been properly cleared and were fully eligible to participate and had been cleared unopposed, were inexplicably barred from being sworn in, while others, some not even members of the Section and clearly unqualified, were administered the oath with various excuses offered after the fact.
The candidate sworn in as Chairman of the Section, Dr. Uju Agomoh was disqualified by the electoral committee for failing to pay her 2025 Bar Practice fees within the stipulated time, while Enome Amatey who was sworn in as Secretary, is not even a member of the Section and as such had not paid his Section dues for 2025, neither had he even applied to run for that office or any office or had been cleared to so run. For Sa'adatu Muhammed who was sworn in as Treasurer, in place of Ms Barbara Tosan Onwubiko, she too never applied for the position as she was the outgoing Treasurer, yet she was graciously lifted that position!
“Section 4 (1) (a) of the Nigerian Bar Association (“NBA” or “Association”) Constitution 2021 (as amended), defines a full member of the Association as “any person duly enrolled at the Supreme Court of Nigeria as a legal practitioner and registered with a Branch of the Association.
Section 4 (1) (b) provides that: "Notwithstanding the provision of Section 4(1) (a), any member who fails or neglects to pay the prescribed Annual Practicing Fees on or before the 31st of March in each year shall have no right to vote or be voted for at any election of the Association.
By Section 4(1) (c) of the NBA Constitution, "Failure or neglect to pay the Annual Practicing Fees and Branch Dues, as and when due, shall disentitle such member from the benefits and privileges accruing to members of the Association."
Thus, any member who fails or neglects to pay his or her Bar Practising Fees (BPF) by or before the end of March of each year shall, for as long as he/she remains in default, inter alia, have no right:
“Of audience in any Court in Nigeria; to prepare, authenticate or frank legal documents including Memorandum and/or Articles of Association; to hold any office whatsoever to which he or she would have been entitled by virtue of his/her qualification as a legal practitioner; to vote or be voted for at any election of the Association.
Furthermore, failure or neglect to pay the Annual Practising Fees and Branch Dues, as and when due, shall be deemed to be an act of professional misconduct.
In consonance with the NBA Constitution, Rule 9 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners 2007 mandatorily stipulates as follows:
“A lawyer shall pay his Annual Practicing Fees not later than 31st March in every year. In the case of lawyers who are enrolled during the year, the fees shall be paid within one month of the enrolment;
“A lawyer shall not claim in any court or before a judicial tribunal that he has paid his Annual Practicing Fee when he is, in fact, in default.
“A lawyer shall not sign documents, pleadings, affidavits, depositions, applications, instruments, agreements, letters, deeds, letters, memorandum, reports, legal opinions or similar documents or processes or file such documents as a legal practitioner, legal officer or adviser of any Governmental department or Ministry or any corporation when he is in default of payment of his Annual Practicing Fees.”
Non-payment of Bar Practising Fees on or before 31 March of each year robs the Legal Practitioner of audience before the courts with effect from the said “cut-off” date.
Non-payment of the Practising Fees as at when due also denies the Legal Practitioner certain privileges e.g. elevation to the Inner Bar as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and/or appointments as Notary Public and as Judicial Officers, eligibility to run for NBA offices.
“Rule 10(1) of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners 2007, also provides that a lawyer acting in the capacity of a legal practitioner, legal officer or adviser of any Governmental department or Ministry or any Corporation, shall not sign or file a legal document unless there is affixed on any such document a seal and stamp approved by the Nigerian Bar Association. The payment of Bar Practising Fees is a pre-condition for the issuance of the annual seal and stamp.
While the right of audience before the Courts can be restored and the qualification for the issuance of annual stamps be remedied by and upon the immediate payment of the Bar Practising Fees, albeit, after the cut-off date of 31st March, the other privileges (e.g. elevation to the Inner Bar and appointments as Notary Public and as a Judicial Officer, election into NBA offices) will unfortunately remain forfeited to the defaulting legal practitioner.
From the report of the SPIDEL Electoral Committee, Dr. Uju Agomoh paid her 2025 Bar Practice fees on the 25th of August, 2025, way past the March 31st deadline, so she is not eligible to run for or hold any office in the NBA, the basis upon which she was rightly disqualified by the electoral committee.
In like manner Article XIII of the Uniform Bye Laws for branches of the NBA Constitution 2021 (as amended), provides that:
(a) No person who is not a member of a Section shall be eligible for election as an Officer of the Section or as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Section.
(b) To be eligible to stand for election as an Officer of the Section or as an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Section, a member shall be validly nominated and shall be a financial member of the Section and shall have paid his/her Section annual dues for the
two (2) years preceding the election. Provided that for the offices of Chairman, Vice Chairman, and Secretary of the Section, he/she shall have served in the Executive Committee of the Section for not less than two (2) years.
(c) A member shall be validly nominated in writing by two members of the Section who are eligible to vote as provided for in these By-Laws;
As seen above by virtue of Section 4(1) and Article XIII of the Uniform Bye Laws for branches of the NBA Constitution 2021 (as amended), to be a Chairman or Secretary or other officer of a section, one must have paid Bar Practice Fees as and when due, should be a member of the Section, validly nominated by two members of the Section who are eligible to vote as provided for in these By-Laws; and shall be a financial member of the Section who has paid his/her Section annual dues for the two (2) years preceding the election. Also, for the offices of Chairman and Secretary of the Section, he/she shall have served in the Executive Committee of the Section for not less than two (2) years.
Dr. Uju Agomoh did not pay her 2024 Bar Practice fees and paid her 2025 fees way out of time, only because she wanted to run for office. From her antecedents in 2024, one can easily hold that she would not have paid for 2025 either, but for the fact that she needed to, so she could be eligible to run. And even then, she paid same out of time. So clearly she is in breach of the NBA Constitution and not qualified to be the Chairman of SPIDEL.
Enome Amatey's issue is even more complex! He was not. Members of SPIDEL, had not paid SPIDEL dues, and so was not a financial member for at least 2 years as stipulated by the Constitution, was not validly nominated for the office and had not held any executive position of the Section to qualify him to hold office as Secretary! He too is in breach of the NBA Constitution and not qualified to hold office as SPIDEL Secretary. Yet these 2 persons are the principal officers of SPIDEL, an arm of the NBA which prides itself on promotion of the rule of law! The irony!
Despite all of these breaches and despite the fact that failure to pay bar practice fees is a fundamental breach of the rules of professional conduct, Bar leaders looked the other way and continue to do so, just because their desire was to foist preferred candidates on SPIDEL and oerfect personal vendattas. The hypocrisy stinks to high heavens.
Not too long ago, several members of the Bar who failed to pay their Bar Practice fees on or before the 31st of March of the election year, were disqualified in compliance with the rules. So why did the powers that be look away in this instance? Why are they still conveniently doing so?
This inconsistency has exposed a troubling disregard for the rules and for the very principles of fairness and due process that SPIDEL claims to uphold. High ranking members of the Bar like the NBA President and Paul Ananaba SAN were fingered as engineers of this travesty of due process and the abuse of the NBA Constitution and the rule of law. It has been revealed that a few days to the SPIDEL elections, a midnight meeting was held with the President of the Bar meeting with Prof. Paul Ananaba, SAN where the report of the Electoral Committee was jettisoned along with all cleared candidates and substituted with new set of persons these men chose.
But the powers that be have not only looked away, there have come up with all manner of excuses as to why they perpetrated this illegality.
Hypocrisy is not merely saying one thing and doing another. It is far more corrosive. It is the conscious use of moral language to legitimise conduct that undermines the very values being proclaimed. When leaders speak passionately about banners without stain, while presiding over actions that truncate process, sidestep published guidelines, and impose outcomes through backroom arrangements, the contradiction is stark and damaging.
SPIDEL is not an ordinary professional group. It is the Section of Public Interest and Development Law of the Nigerian Bar Association. Its authority rests not on power, but on moral consistency. It exists to remind others that process matters, that justice must be seen to be done, and that law must restrain power. When such a section is perceived to abandon these ideals internally, the stain is not symbolic. It is institutional.
What deepens the irony is that all the right words were spoken. The banner was waved. The speeches were stirring. The keynote was delivered by one of the loudest voices against injustice in the country. Yet, words without corresponding action are empty. Principles that collapse at the point of inconvenience are not principles at all.
It is not dissent that threatens institutions. It is hypocrisy. Institutions decay when leaders demand standards from others that they refuse to apply to themselves. They weaken when criticism is dismissed as hostility and questions are framed as sabotage. A banner without stain cannot be sustained by rhetoric alone. It must be upheld by conduct.
Leadership in the legal profession requires more than eloquence. It demands moral courage, consistency, and a willingness to submit to the same rules imposed on others. Anything less reduces noble themes to ironic footnotes.
In the end, the tragedy is not that a banner was proclaimed. It is that, at the very moment it was being lifted, it was being stained.
