Another Feather In Mary Odili’s Cap

Justice Mary Ukaego Peter-Odili, a retired Supreme Court judge, has recently been in the news for all the
right reasons. She was confirmed as the 51st Chairperson of the Body of Benchers, succeeding Wole Olanipekun, SAN, who took office as the 50th chairman in March 2022 and became vice-chairman on March 30, 2021.
Justice Peter-Odili has an impeccable judicial record and possesses all the qualities of an excellent judge, including judicial temperament, intelligence, morals, courage, integrity, experience, and education. We congratulate her on her elevation and hope she draws strength, wisdom and experience from the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, who himself is a lifelong Bencher.
The Nigerian Body of Benchers is a professional body concerned with the admission of successful candidates at the Nigerian Law School Bar Final Examination into the legal profession. Members of the body are called Benchers. The body also regulates the call of graduates of law school to the Nigerian Bar, as well as the regulation of the legal profession in the country.
Without doubt, Peter-Odili’s appointment constitutes a perfect key to a greater development of legal jurisprudence and dispensation of justice in Nigeria. It will fetch the Body a new synergy and strengthen the principles of the legal organisation. Her contributions to Nigerian jurisprudence are so outstanding that they have continued to elicit accolades among legal practitioners.
Justice Peter-Odili’s service and the fecundity of her jurisprudential knowledge have continued to give unquantifiable boosts to the legal profession, not only in Nigeria but also across Africa. We can truly describe her emergence as putting a square peg in a square hole. It is a demonstration of true merit such that an author, Amit Kalantri, says, “It is like steel and not like cotton, that seems small from the outside but weighs heavy on the inside.”
Mary retired from the Supreme Court last year as the first woman from Rivers State to be elevated to the apex court in Nigeria. She was appointed to the court to fill the vacancy created by Justice Nikki Tobi’s retirement. In appreciation of her exemplary service, Governor Wike built a judicial training institute, saddled with the responsibility of training judges and magistrates, in her honour.
The eminent jurist is the wife of Dr Peter Odili who served as Governor of Rivers State from 1999 to 2007. While serving as the First Lady, her Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), The Adolescent Programme (TAP), trained several youths and women in the state on various skills and provided them with starter packs to make them self-reliant and productive. She has not only proven her mettle in her chosen carrier, but she is also a quintessential wife and mother.
Given her professional orbit and all-embracing knowledge of the Nigerian judicial system, her tenure in her new-found position will be a remarkable success. Because she is a titan in the legal profession, who has contributed to the ideological conduct of legal professionals through great works, enviable comportment and unbending principles, the Body of Benchers cannot be in better hands.
Beyond her appointment as chairperson of the organisation, she must start strongly, particularly as her tenure will last for only a year. We urge her not to lose sight of the unpleasant happenings bedevilling the legal job. The profession is under attack and aggression. Members of the Body of Benchers must join hands with her to identify and address the myriad of challenges facing the Nigerian legal occupation currently.
The vulnerabilities that have been noticed and exposed in the legal carrier are disturbing. Peter-Odili’s appointment provides the opportunity for deep introspection and self-assessment. The Benchers must make efforts to ensure that the practice of the legal occupation and the courts always measure up to the moral, ethical and statutory standards they subscribe to.
Legal education is crucial; any neglect would amount to a fatal consequence in the entire process of justice adjudication. However, the state of legal education in Nigeria is regrettable. It is far from the international standard. This is taking its toll on the entire system of justice administration at every step of our journey as a nation. The development has always been reflected in the quality of lawyers in our nation.
Consequently, the Body must take tough steps and end poor funding of legal education. Successive governments are guilty of this. This case of clear neglect on the side of the government has kept legal education in stagnation for years. Shamefully, no faculty of law in Nigeria has modern facilities to train a 21st-century lawyer. The traditional method of bombarding students with notes and handouts is still in place, slowing the pace of learning.
Also, the proliferation of law faculties is another factor militating against legal education in Nigeria. The more law faculties we have, the more substandard. In 1962, there were four faculties of law in the country and one Nigerian law school located in Lagos. Today, over fifty law faculties exist in federal, state, and private universities. This results in a monumental disproportionate student–lecturer ratio.
Likewise, the law school curriculum remains the same. This hinders innovation that could have repositioned legal research and the industry as a whole. The obsolete programmes offered by the various law schools in Nigeria also persist and largely unimproved, thus leaving students in an uncongenial academic predicament.
Indeed, the challenges facing legal education and the legal profession in the country are considerable. Justice Peter-Odili and her team of Benchers must pull out all the stops to salvage a dangerous situation. Where necessary, pressure should be brought to bear on relevant stakeholders and the government to prevent our “legal ship” from sinking entirely.