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From Godwin Tsa Abuja
A professional group, Advocacy for Bar License Freedom (ABLIF), has called on the leadership of the National Assembly to investigate the circumstances surrounding the conduct of the purported public hearing on the Legal Practitioners Bill.
President Bola Tinubu has transmitted an executive bill to the National Assembly seeking the repeal of the Legal Practitioners Act, 2024 and its reenactment with a new regulatory framework and reforms to enhance professional standards, discipline, mechanisms and public confidence in legal practice in Nigeria.
Already, the national assembly has kick-started the process of passing the bill into law by conducting a public hearing on the proposed bill.
However, the advocacy group has faulted the process adopted at the public hearing, describing it as ‘selective hearing’ and not a public hearing as contemplated by law and legislative practice.
In its separate petitions to the leadership of the two legislative chambers, ABLIF said the actions of the Committee constituted a clear violation of the ‘right to fair hearing’ guaranteed under Section 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).
The petitions dated December 19, 2025, were jointly signed by the National Convener of the group, Hameed Ajibola Jimoh and its National Secretary, Christabel Zoe Ayuk. While faulting the process adopted for the public hearing, the group called on the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, to direct that a fresh, inclusive and transparent public hearing be conducted.
ABLIF has equally urged the national assembly leadership to declare that the hearing, as conducted, failed to meet the minimum standards of a public hearing.
It argued that public hearings are meant to be inclusive, transparent and participatory, especially where stakeholders have complied with all procedural requirements.
“What transpired on December 18, 2025 cannot, in law or in fairness, be described as a public hearing.
“The exclusion of ABLIF, despite timely submission and recorded presence, was unjustifiable and unconstitutional. Legislative processes must not only be fair but must also be seen to be fair.
“ABLIF firmly maintains that what transpired cannot, in good conscience and in law, be described as a public hearing.
The hearing was conducted in a manner that selectively favoured certain groups while deliberately sidelining others.
“Any report or recommendation emanating from such a process is fundamentally defective.”
The petitions read: “Our memorandum was physically placed on the table before the Committee, alongside other memoranda. Shockingly, organisations that ‘submitted their memoranda as late as the previous day’ (as openly admitted by one presenter) were allowed to speak, while ABLIF was deliberately excluded.
“It was only after our representative insisted and raised the acknowledged copy of our memorandum that members of the Committee opened the envelope, confirmed that ABLIF had indeed complied with all requirements and brought out the memorandum.
“Upon realising this fact, the chairman of the Committee abruptly ended the hearing, thereby effectively preventing ABLIF from exercising its constitutional right to be heard.
“ABLIF states and reasonably believes that the selective exclusion complained of was not accidental, but motivated by ABLIF’s principled and public opposition to the monopoly asserted by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) over the entire legal profession.
“ABLIF has consistently maintained a public-interest stance against the commercialisation of the legal profession by the NBA as a private association and has advocated for bar-licensing freedom, pluralism and reforms that decentralise regulatory control in the best interest of access to justice.
“It is ABLIF’s firm position that the selective justice meted out at the hearing would not have occurred without the influence, pressure or tacit endorsement of the NBA, whose dominant position and interests are directly implicated by the issues raised in ABLIF’s memorandum on the LPA Bill.
“Where a public hearing excludes a duly registered and present stakeholder solely because of its viewpoints or advocacy positions, such exclusion amounts to viewpoint discrimination, undermines legislative independence and offends the constitutional guarantee of fair hearing.
“Credible information available to ABLIF indicates that the failure to call or recognise it was deliberate and premeditated, rather than an oversight.
“ABLIF further states, with utmost seriousness and responsibility, that the selective justice meted out at the said hearing appears to be directly connected to ABLIF’s well-known and consistent advocacy against the monopoly of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) over the entire legal profession and its opposition to the commercialisation and privatisation of legal practice regulation by the NBA as a private association.”
