NBA must fight for public cause, say Falana, Belgore, Odinkalu

Top human rights activists and senior lawyers have called on the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to renew its interest in taking up cases that deepen people’s access to justice and protection of their socioeconomic economic rights as spelt out in the Nigerian constitution and other statutes.

The lawyers spoke at a webinar conference organised by the Lagos State Chapter of the NBA with the theme “COVID-19, Access to Justice and Human Rights Violations”.

Speaking on the topic, leading human rights activist Femi Falana (SAN) urged the NBA to return to its old tradition of taking up litigation on matters of public interest, recalling how he and others had used the Freedom of Information Act, among other states, to challenge governments’ positions on issues of public interest.

Falana lamented that the NBA was gradually losing its role as the frontline defender of the legal rights of the masses, urging the body to urgently restore the optimism with which it fought against social injustice in the past.

Muhammad Dele Belgore (SAN), another panellist at the webinar, urged the NBA to place much premium on protecting and enforcing “economic and social rights of the people as that is a way of bringing about societal change”.

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