Section 12 of the Legal Practitioners Act Examined

Abstract

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed its decision in Jide Aladejobi v. NBA by its ruling in Rotimi Williams Akintokun v. LPDC. The ruling of the court is to the effect that appeals from Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) lie to the Appeal Committee of the Body of Benchers. Prior to this period, the same court had ruled in Charles Okike v. LPDC (No. 1) that appeals from the decisions of the LPDC lie to Supreme Court without any amendment to the extant laws applicable to both cases. The court had in these two cases relied on the provisions of section 12 of the Legal Practitioners Act 1990 as amended. Section 11 of the Legal Practitioners (Amendment) Decree 1994 expressly repealed section 12 of the Legal Practitioners Act. This paper reconciled these seeming conflicting decisions of the apex court by suggesting an amendment of the section under examination. The paper critically examined all the tentacles of the repealed and amended portions of section 12 of the Legal Practitioners Act. The paper identifies two schools of thoughts in arriving at some seemingly safe recommendations. The paper further proposed the harmonization of the scattered provisions of the various amendments to the Legal Practitioners Act in a proposed Legal Practitioners (Consolidation) Act.