Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has berated the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) for inviting social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan, to speak at its annual conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Falana stated his views in an interview with Channels Television on Thursday, responding to the uproar surrounding VDM’s participation at the NBA’s 66th Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt, where he spoke about insecurity.
The senior lawyer contended that speakers selected to address lawyers should have relevant expertise or experience in the subject at hand and that the NBA’s conferences should be opportunities for intellectual engagement rather than entertainment.
He said, “In those days, the NBA brought individuals who had paid their dues, who were coming to engage lawyers intellectually. We wanted to learn from them, and so the NBA was not… none of our conferences was a side show in the past.”
Falana stated that the choice of speakers should be influenced by the topic of discussion, especially when dealing with specialized topics such as national security.
“So, if you are bringing an expert to discuss the security of the country, either from the private or public sector, such an individual must have contributed to the security architecture of the country,” he replied.
He went on to say that admitting people without relevant experience to discuss specialized subjects could undermine the conference’s goal.
“But when you bring people who have nothing to do with the security of the country, there are problems. It’s like talking about media freedom, press freedom—you are going to bring practitioners in that field, whether in academia or in the newsroom. But to just go and bring somebody from nowhere to come and entertain you, there are problems with that,” Falana said.
His comments came after the presenter cited views from certain lawyers, like Professor Chidi Odinkalu, who justified VDM’s invitation as an opportunity for the legal profession to get feedback from members of the public who engage with the court system.
Falana responded that Odinkalu’s argument applied more broadly to public involvement, but it did not necessarily justify asking a speaker with no relevant experience to talk on a specialized topic.
“With profound respect to my very good friend Chidi Odinkalu, he was talking in the general sense. We’re talking of this particular case,” Falana said.
He acknowledged the necessity of lawyers addressing the public but said that discussions about specialized security issues should involve persons who have actual understanding or experience with the subject.
“If we are talking about justice delivery in the country, we now want to hear from members of the public; that will have been okay. But if you are talking about the security of the country, it does require that you bring people who are involved in maintaining the security of the country or who are victims of abductions and the rest of them,” he said.
Falana argued that the NBA should return to its conferences’ intellectual legacy, citing lectures by notable legal luminaries that sparked public discourse outside the events.
“In those days—in those days, the submissions of some of our lecturers, like the late Dr. Akinola Aguda when he addressed us in 1985, or the late Justice Oputa when he addressed our conference in 1987—for several days and weeks, their submissions became matters of public discourse,” he said.
“Editorial comments were written on them, lawyers debated them even after the conference, and we learned from them. And I think lawyers, as I said, we should go back to that era.”
Falana also stated that the NBA should carefully assess the qualifications of political leaders invited to talk about democracy and the rule of law, adding that their track records in office should be scrutinized.
He said, “So if you’re going to have a former head of state to address lawyers to talk about democracy or rule of law, then you must bring someone who can say, ‘When I was in power, there was not a single court order that I disobeyed, I didn’t lock up people illegally, I didn’t harass the media,’ and so on and so forth.”
The controversy surrounding VDM’s attendance at the conference has sparked emotions, particularly after his charges about the conduct of security forces in regard to kidnapping and insecurity in the country.
