The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Lawyer

  • Ex-banker’s failure to get lawyer stalls trial

    THE non-appearance of a lawyer for a former Wena Bank worker, Kazeem Olawuwo,  yesterday stalled his trial for alleged fraud at an Igbosere Magistrates’ Court.

    The police on January 3 charged Olawuwo, 37, and his female friend, Risikatu Wahab, 35, on a 12-count charge of conspiracy, fraud and stealing.

    At yesterday’s resumed hearing,  Magistrate T. A. Idowu noticed that the defendants had no lawyers.

    She ordered the defendants to ensure that they got lawyers before the next adjourned date of April 2.

    Prosecuting Sergeant Friday Mameh said the accused committed the offence sometime between October 2016 and April 2018, at Wema Bank Plc, Orile Iganmu branch, Lagos.

    Read also: President’s victory ’ll guarantee growth of critical infrastructure, says BON DG

    He alleged that Olawuwo used his position to fraudulently transfer N2.4 million to different accounts.

    The prosecutor said the money was transferred in tranches from customers’ accounts to Olawuwo’s friends’ accounts.

    Wahab, he said, was one of Olawuwo’s friends who received the cash,  with the knowledge that the transaction was done fraudulently.

    Mameh said Olawuwo fraudulently transferred N500, 000 to Wahab from a customer’s  account.

    The prosecutor said Olawuwo transferred N1.9 million to Kazeem Olanrewaju, who is at large, adding that the transfer was done five times.

     

     

  • Electoral reforms: Falana seeks implementation of Uwais, Lemu, Nnamani’s report

    Lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) has urged the civil societies to join forces and mount pressure on the federal government to implement the recommendations of the Electoral Reforms Panels headed by Retired Justice Mohammed Uwais, Sheik Ahmed Lemu and Dr. Ken Nnamani for the country to have  flawless elections in future.

    He stated that the postponement of last Saturday’s elections by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) on account of logistical or operational reasons cannot be justified under the Electoral Act or the Constitution and would have been prevented if the reports, “with far reaching electoral reforms”, have been implemented.  

    Falana stated this in a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday titled: “Time to revisit reports of Uwais, Lemu and Nnamabi panels”.

    “By virtue of section 26 of the Electoral Act, an election may be postponed if a serious breach of peace or violence is likely to occur or on account of natural disaster or other emergencies. To prevent any abuse of power the reasons for postponement of any election must be cogent and verifiable”, he maintained.

    He said the panels, set up by the Yaradua, Jonathan and Buhari regimes respectively, had recommended the unbundling of INEC for effective performance.

    Read also: Poll Shift: INEC to decide on resumption of campaign

    He contended that the postponement of the 2019 general election would not have occured if the federal government  had unbundled the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) and ensured the practice of internal democracy in the political parties.

    He accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People Democratic Party (PDP) of failing to commit themselves to electoral reforms and for forgetting that the late President Umoru Yaradua had admitted that the 2007 general election  which produced his regime was highly flawed.

    Since general elections had been postponed on two previous occasions due to lack of adequate preparations, he argued that INEC ought to have prevented the shifting of the 2019 general election.

    He said INEC and the political parties contributed to the postponement of the elections which he described as “a national shame and embarrassment”.

    “Owing to the decision of political leaders to select and impose candidates on their parties in utter violation of section 87 of the Electoral Act  many aggrieved candidates rushed to court for legal redress.

    “Consequently, not less than 600 pre-election cases were filed and are pending in the various courts while not less 40 orders have directed INEC to accept the names of candidates who won the primaries but were shortchanged.  The resort to litigation due to the impunity of majority of political parties contributed to the unwarranted delay in the preparations of INEC for the general elections”, he argued.

    He said both the APC and PDP, apart from INEC, should apologise to Nigerians for their deliberate refusal to implement the electoral reforms recommended by the two panels.

    He stated for instance “as INEC lacks the capacity to prosecute electoral offenders, an electoral offences commission/ tribunal was recommended for the enforcement of laws to address all forms of electoral offences and consequently stem the incidence of electoral violence.

    “Even the panels had recommended that the posts of the chairman and other members of the INEC be advertised in order to make them independent of the executive. But in a bid to sustain the status quo of electoral fraud, these recommendations and others have been rejected by the PDP and APC-led federal government”, he said.

    He said INEC,  having shifted the general election by seven days is wrong to ban political parties and their candidates from further campaigning for votes.

    He advised the commission to reverse the limitation of campaign imposed on the political parties immediately.

    He noted: “INEC has not paid attention to  Section 99 of the Electoral Act which provides that the period of campaigning in public by political parties shall end 24 hours before polling day. Since elections have been shifted, the period of campaign has also shifted and will end 24 hours to the new polling day”.

    He also advised INEC to comply with all valid and subsisting court orders with respect to the candidates sponsored by political parties for the general elections to avoid the courts annulling some of the elections in future on grounds of exclusion of qualified candidates.

  • Boycott: Party supporters beat up Rivers NBA chairman, lawyer

    There was a rowdy session at the Appeal Court sitting in Port Harcourt today as some party supporters attacked and beat up the Port Harcourt branch chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association.

    Trouble started when some lawyers under the aegis of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) lead by its Port Harcourt branch chairman, Sylvester Adaka stormed the Court of Appeal to appeal to a sitting Judge to adjourn proceedings for the day in furtherance of NBA’s protest against the suspension of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Onnoghen by President Muhammadu Buhari.

    The presiding Judge, Justice A. A. Gumel condemned and cautioned the lawyers and their approach in the protest, accusing them of desecrating the temple of justice.

    Speaking to them, Gumel said: “Lawyers who are ministers of the court which is the temple of justice should not desecrate it by turning the courts into a public square, where lawyers will carry placards to disrupt court proceedings.”

    He said that he was in the court just to take records of processes but will hear motions at an adjourned date.

    But when members of the NBA insisted the sitting be adjourned, some party supporters in court attacked the NBA chairman and other lawyers who were with him.

    They beat them up, insisting the proceedings must continue.

    The matters slated for the day were the controversial All Progressives Party appeals.

    Read Also: Boycott directive stalls Onnoghen’s case in Industrial Court

    The Court later took record of five different appeals afterwards, all bothering on decision of Justice Omotosho of the federal high court in Port Harcourt to stay executive on the judgement.

    Justice Gumel however adjourned all appeals till January 31, 2019 for hearing of motion on notice

    The Rivers APC governorship candidate, Tonye Cole, who was in court condemned the episode describing it as unfortunate.

    He said: “I think what happened in court today was unfortunate and I don’t think it speaks well of the NBA.”

    Adaka said lawyers were in court to peacefully boycott proceedings of the court as directed by its national secretariat and national executive committee before he was attacked.

    He said: “While we were in court of appeal, I peacefully addressed the justices of the court of appeal to rise in continuation of our peaceful boycott of courts and also appealed to lawyers to leave the court premises.

    “But while we were in court, a couple of thugs in the court premises attacked the lawyers there, the thugs zeroed in on me and a couple of lawyers, if not for the intervention of my colleagues around, I don’t know what would have happened.“

  • ‘Lawyer bashed hubby’s head with frying pan before cutting off penis’

    A Lagos High Court in Igbosere on Wednesday heard a chilling, blow- by- blow account of how a lawyer, Udeme Otike-Odibi, allegedly killed her lawyer husband Symphorosa Otike-Odibi and severed his penis.

    A prosecution witness, Mr Olusegun Bamidele, told Justice Adedayo Akintoye that Udeme, 48, whacked Symphorosa on the head with a frying pan several times before stabbing him on the stomach with a kitchen knife.

    Still furious, she sat beside his corpse on the bed and said: “‘If this your penis is the one that is giving you license not to have the feeling of another person, it is better we cut it off.”

    Udeme then severed the penis before putting a piece of it in his right hand.

    Bamidele, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in the homicide section of the State Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Panti, Yaba, Lagos, testified as the Lagos State Government’s ninth witness in Udeme’s murder trial.

    His testimony followed Udeme’s June 13 arraignment on a two-count charge of murder and misconduct with regard to a corpse, by Lagos State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Titilayo Shitta-Bey.

    The government accused the defendant of stabbing Symphorosa, also a lawyer, to death and mutilating his corpse by cutting off his genitals, on May 3 at their Diamond Estate, Sangotedo, Lekki, Lagos home.

    Shitta-Bey said the offences contravened sections 165 (b) and 223 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

    Udeme pleaded “not guilty”, following which she was remanded in prison custody.

    At the resumption of trial on Wednesday, Shitta-Bey called Bamidele, a 30-year police veteran, as the state’s final witness.

    Bamidele told the court that he was the head of a team that investigated the killing and that he personally recorded the defendant’s statement.

    He said the second time he met Udeme, she had been moved from Safeway Hospital in Lekki to protective police custody at a police hospital at Ikeja.

    It was there, he said, during an interactive session, that Udeme wrote a detailed confessional statement.

    She said the defendant was recuperating from what one of the doctors that attended to her described as “superficial and self-inflicted wounds,” but that she spoke freely after identifying herself as a lawyer.

    Bamidele said: “While she (Udeme) was writing her statement, it was an interactive session. I put questions to her, she would explain it to me and put it down in writing.

    “She stated in her statement that she was married to the late Symphorosa and that they were having marital issues.

    “She stated that the deceased was having extra-marital affairs and whenever she raised the issue with him, his responses were not satisfactory; he appeared nonchalant.

    “She said also in the statement that on the second of May 2018, she was preparing to travel to the United Kingdom. She checked the bedside locker for her marriage certificate.

    “When she could not find it, she went to the deceased where he lay on the bed and asked him about it but there was no response, the response given was not okay.

    “She had a discussion with him and there was hot exchange of words, which made her to go to the kitchen and get a frying pan and knife.

    “When she returned to where the deceased lay, she hit him on the head with the frying pan and said ‘Tell me, what is in your mind that you are withholding.’

    “She stated that the deceased called his mother to report her conduct.

    “She continued to hit the deceased on the head again and again. Finally, she confirmed that she used the knife to stab the deceased in his abdomen.

    “She also said while the deceased was lying on his back, she was still angry. She sat beside him, looking at his intestines coming out of the deceased and said: ‘If this your penis is the one that is giving you license not to have the feeling of another person, it’s better we cut it off,’ and she proceeded to do so with the same knife she used in stabbing him and hanged a piece of the penis in his right hand.’”

    Promoted by Shitta-Bey, Bamidele explained that later that night, Udeme sent her “close friend” Maureen Offor, a WhatsApp message which read: “I have done something terrible.”

    The witness said further investigation showed that she sent two other WhatsApp message, firstly to the husband of the deceased’s younger sister, Charles Akpoguma, which read: “Just pray for us. May God forgive.”

    The last one was to her mother in Calabar the same night. It read: “Sorry mum, we engaged in a fight.”

    Her mum tried and failed to call her back, Bamidele said.

    A few minutes later, Udeme called back and said: “Don’t disturb my life, let my phone free so I can receive calls from the ambulance.”

    Then she cut the call.

    Things took a more graphic turn when the prosecution played pictures of the defendant on a hospital bed after the incident and her bloodied deceased husband on his deathbed.

    Udeme looked straight in front of her from where she sat in the dock while the amplified pictures were displayed on a wall to her right.

    Shitta-Bey also tendered through Bamidele several exhibits recovered from the defendant.

    Read Also: Two lawyers kidnapped in Rivers

    They included a big, shiny frying pan allegedly used by the defendant on the deceased, a blood-covered kitchen knife Udeme allegedly used in killing Symphorosa, a bloodstained pen, four phones, two of which were bloodstained, Udeme’s Nigerian and British passports.

    But when Shitta-Bey sought to tender the two statements Udeme allegedly made to the police, her counsel, Mr Olusegun Banjoko, opposed her.

    Banjoko, after showing the statements to his client, prayed the court not to admit both, on the ground, among others, that they were made without her lawyer being present, as required by law.

    Justice Akintoye adjourned till February 25 to consider the admissibility of the statements in a trial within trial.

  • How to tackle corruption, by lawyer

    A Lagos lawyer, Wahab Shittu, has advocated the establishment of ethical and moral code of conduct for political actors in the country.

    Mr. Shittu, one of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)’s lawyers, said the code of conduct when operational would guide and regulate the affairs of politicians.

    He added that “this will enable them to know what is permissible and what is not permissible.”

    The legal practitioner said this in Offa, Offa Local Government Area of Kwara State at a colloquium organised by a group known as Galaxy Clique Offa.

    The colloquium, which is its second edition, was in memory of the victims of April 5 robbery attacks in Offa.

    The colloquium was entitled “The Lost Concept of Omoluabi in Our society.”

    He said: “We need to re-enact the Omoluabi movement at various levels. We can, from that platform, begin to build political parties and other things. Without that, the society is in serious danger.

    “It is for us to restore core values in our national consciousness as a vehicle for development. The family in our contemporary society is under serious attack. And so the values that we used to cherish before the foundation of the family are increasingly eroding away. And we

    need to do something about it.

    “Before, when you were privileged to be rich, people would want to know the source of your wealth. But today what is important to most people is that you are wealthy. They do not want to bother about the source of your wealth. That is why the society is in serious decline.

    “Again, there is pervasive corruption these days occasioned by indiscipline and absence of core values. There is mismanagement of resources. In summary, we need to re-enact the process of core values.

    “We need to bring back those values so that the foundation of the family can be restored.

    I am suggesting that in the quest to pursue a career, we should not neglect the home. Be it mother or father. If we neglect the home, we will not be able to monitor the activities of our children and inculcate in them those core values. And even at that, we need to introduce civics in our school system so that people will know what is right and what is wrong.”

    He said Nigeria’s craze for money and material things caused the moral degeneracy we are witnessing these days.

    “We got it wrong when we started emphasising the craze for money. Yes, money is very important, but we need to question the source of wealth of an individual.

    It is not just money, we should be more interested in the colour of money.

    “Because of this craze for money, most of our young people are ready to indulge in internet scams and all kinds of rituals alien to our culture,” Shittu said.

     

  • Restructuring: Okunronmu, Majekodunmi, Ogunbanjo,others to visit Ogun Assembly Speaker

    Again, the call for the restructuring of Nigeria’s political, economic and social firmaments will be reignited on tomorrow January 16th 2019 in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State as eminent Yoruba leaders of thought, including Senators Femi Okunronmi, Akin Odunsi, Tokunbo Ogunbanjo; among others pay a visit to the Speaker, Ogun State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Suraj Adekunbi to seek for his support.
    Other Yoruba leaders that would be on the visit include Chairman, Voice of Reason, Dr Femi Adegoke and the Convener, Yoruba Koya Leadership and Training Foundation, Otunba ‘Deji Osibogun whose organization is spare-heading the visit.
    The rest are: the governorship candidate of Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 2015 in Lagos State, Mr. Bolaji Ogunseye; renowned Lawyer, Otunba Alaba Shonibare, Otunba Tilewa Osifeso, United States based Medical Doctor, John Mabayoje, University Don, Tunde Fatunde, Chief Kunle Osuntokun, Seasoned Industrialist, Otunba Remi Abdul, Chairman of Cowries Radio, Abeokuta, Mr. Willy Thomas, among others.
    In a statement made available to newsmen on Tuesday in Lagos, the National Director of Organization and Publicity of Yoruba Koya, Mr. Maxwell Adeleye said the core objective of the visit was to let all elected Yoruba parliamentarians understand why the restructuring of Nigeria’s political, economic and social structures must be implemented now for the sake of the generation yet unborn.
    He also said the visitation, which already held in Lagos State House of Assembly successfully, was being taken to all the parliaments in Yoruba land and that the visit to Abeokuta was aimed at formally seeking for the support of Speaker Adekunbi and other members of Ogun State House of Assembly on the constitutional request to restructure Nigeria in order to address injustice, inequality and unemployment threatening the peace of the nation.
    The statement disclosed that Rt. Hon. Adekunbi would be presented with, a paper titled “Yoruba Nation in a Restructured Nigeria Federation,” written by Yoruba Koya Leadership and Training Foundation, the September 2017 Ibadan Declaration on Restructuring by Yoruba People and draft of Proposed Nigerian Constitution written by Voice of Reason (VOR) during the visit.

  • Lawyer threatens massive protests over minimum wage

    Akure lawyer Morakinyo Ogele has given a seven-day ultimatum to governors who are not ready to pay the N30,000 minimum wage to workers to resign or face mass protest.

    The activist threatened to lead a massive protest against what he called oppression of the poor masses by those who refuse to pay the new minimum wage.

    He described the office of some governors’ wives as a waste of funds.

    According to him, governors spend one-third of the state allocation, which can take care of urgent needs of the people, on the office of their wives.

    Read also: ‘Improve national productivity to justify N30,000 minimum wage’

    In a statement in Akure, the Ondo State capital, Ogele insisted that governors have the capacity to pay N30,000.

    The statement reads: “There is no section in 1999 Constitution recognising the Office of First Lady; governors should engage their wives at Government House, attending to domestic demands of their husbands.

    “This office is draining the states’ treasuries. Some of the first ladies are operating parallel offices with the governors, having their own pool of vehicles and personal assistants.”

     

  • Lawyer bemoans absence of medical council

    •Osanyin is association’s VP

    A medical law expert, ‘Laolu Osanyin, has decried the Federal Government’s failure to constitute the Medical and Dental Council.

    He said the Medical and Dental Disciplinary Tribunal has not sat for almost four years as a result of this.

    According to him, failure to constitute the council and the abysmal budgetary allocation for health are two major challenges faced by patients in Nigeria.

    Osanyin, who chairs the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Committee on Medicine and the Law, spoke to The Nation, following his election as World Association for Medical Law (WAML) Vice- President. He was elected at the association’s world congress on medical law in Tel Aviv, Israel in September.

    WAML, the global body of experts and scholars in medical law, was established in Ghent, Belgium, in 1967 to encourage the study and discussion of medical law, legal medicine and ethics for the benefit of society and the advancement of human rights.

    Osanyin is the first and only African on the association’s Board of Governors. He is saddled with the responsibility of developing the body of knowledge of medical law on the African continent.

    He is also a member of the WAML Education Committee responsible for setting the global curriculum and modules for the study of medical law.

    Osanyin is the founder and convener of the Nigerian Medical Law Summit and the African Medical Law Summit.

    He is the organiser of the Medical Law Seminar Series – a medicolegal training platform for Nigerian health workers.

    The lawyer is a member of the Nigerian National Health Research Ethics Committee (NHREC), the American College of Legal Medicine and Senior Partner of First Counsel Solicitors, a medical law consulting firm.

    According to him, poor funding of the health sector is tantamount to a death penalty itself, while the failure to constitute the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria has hampered the regulation of medical practice.

    “There is a prevalence of gross malpractices and misconducts on the part of practitioners. For almost four years, the Medical and Dental Disciplinary Tribunal has not sat because there is no Council in place. Doctors, who have cases before the Tribunal are forced to practice defensive medicine to the detriment of their patients.”

  • SAN seeks equal application as lawyer backs Executive Order 6

    A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Mr. Jibrin Okutepa (SAN) has welcomed the Executive Order 06 issued by President Muhammadu Buhari.

    He urged law enforcement agencies to ensure its equal application without fear, favour or ill-will.

    A former Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Legal Adviser Mr. Victor C. Nwaugo also backed Executive Order 6.

    Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN), had said the essence of the Executive Order 6 was to ensure that assets connected to persons under investigation or trial were not dissipated.

    Okutepa said Nigeria was not the only country where that kind of executive order was being issued.

    He recalled that in the United Kingdom, there is the Unexplained Wealth Order, which is applied to those whose assets appear to be more than their legitimate income.

    Okutepa said: “I think the essence of these orders is to ensure that corruption is dealt a fatal blow in our land. I think the greatest enemies of Nigeria are Nigerians not the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or All Progressives Congress (APC).

    “The primitive acquisitions of material wealth in Nigeria and the unbridled manner it is done and being done should worry any right thinking person. The primaries of political parties have come and gone but we all saw what aspirants went through.

    “We should be worried that people buy their way to power. The rate of corruption and corrupt influences in Nigeria require extraordinary measures to deal with.

    “Those talking about human rights of those who have sentenced us to economic death sentence should appreciate that when those people were killing us vide corruption, they did not think of our own human rights to good road, health care and other social amenities.

    “Nigerians must see that corruption is the greatest business enterprise in Nigeria. We all hate it but love its practice. For me any measure that will bring corruption to an end is good for Nigeria.

    “Corruption is a heavyweight wrestler. It cannot be fought with kids’ glove. We need necessary process to fight it and I believe the Orders of government are necessary instruments to fight it.

    “As Nigerians, we should insist on even application to all and sundry without fear or favour affection or ill-will. There must not be selective applications.”

    Nwaugo said the order was merely a presidential policy directive issued towards curbing corruption.

    “It should be borne in mind that, in course of the campaign for the election of Muhammadu Buhari as the President of Nigeria, he made fight against corruption one of the cardinal principles of his administration, which Nigerians overwhelmingly endorsed by voting him into power.

    “That the 1999 constitution guarantees freedom of movement and fair trial of a Nigerian citizen does not guarantee absolute freedom or innocence of every Nigerian.

    “The constitution qualifies such freedom and fair trial under Sections 35 (1) (c) and 36 (5) of the constitution.

    “Presumption of innocence does not qualify as absolute innocence hence once an accused is under investigation, his right to freely move may be temporarily hampered within the realm of the security agency concerned or even before the court if charged.

    “In fact, once a person is standing trial, his freedom of movement is temporarily hampered pending the trial and determination of his case as his right to movement will be subjected to the discretion of the court concerned,” Nwaugo said.

    The lawyer recalled that America had refused to allow journalists interview security agents who interrogated the perpetuators of bombing of twin pillars of America, as it was classified as a matter of security.

    “Extra ordinary situation requires extra-ordinary measure. In Nigeria, right before our very eyes few individuals have cornered by fraudulent means, the resources and  wealth that would have librated Nigeria from the shackles of poverty.

    “Contracts running into billions would be awarded for construction of roads, the roads would not be constructed, but the money released and shared by few while the majority will be made to suffer the effect of failure to construct such roads. Some lose their goods or lives for few wicked fraudsters to smile to the bank.

    “There is the argument that Order 6 of 2018 seeks to usurp the functions of the Judiciary particularly because some of the presumed persons to be affected by the Order are already standing trial before the court and therefore subject to the discretion of the court in determining whether they can travel out of Nigeria or not.

    “That argument cannot hold water in the face of the case of Barr. Ikenga Imo & Anor vs. President of Federal Republic of Nigeria & Anor, FHC/ABJ/CS/740/18where the court affirmed our position that Executive Order 6 of 2018 is not self executory but that concerned security agency shall seek the discretion of court in the temporary seizure or restriction of movement of the citizen concerned.

    “In other words, the security agency concerned in the ongoing cases before the court can only restrict the movement of any accused person or temporarily seize the suspected corruptly acquired property after obtaining an Order of court to that effect.

    “I have carefully perused the contents of Executive Order 6 of 2018, I have also compared same with the constitutional provisions guaranteeing fundamental right of Nigerians, I have also looked at Sections 5 and 15 (5) of the 1999 constitution which empowers the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria to exercise Executive Powers of the Federation and abolish all corrupt practices.

    “I have come to the immutable conclusion that Preservation of Assets Connected with Corruption and other Related Offences Order 2018 is a necessary instrument that will enable the relevant agencies wage war against corruption in Nigeria,” Nwaugo said.

     

     

  • Lawyer wins IBA human rights award

    Human rights lawyer, Mr. Adeola Austin Oyinlade, has won this year’s International Bar Association (IBA) Award for Outstanding Contribution by a Legal Practitioner to Human Rights.

    The prestigious award was presented to him at the IBA Conference in Rome, Italy.

    Oyinlade emerged winner ahead of other finalists from many countries.

    Each year, the IBA presents the award to an outstanding lawyer in human rights law.

    The IBA has a membership of over 80,000 individual lawyers and 195 bar associations and law societies worldwide.

    Oyinlade has distinguished himself through his courageous stand for human rights and his pro-bono legal services to the poor in Nigeria.

    As a lawyer advocating equitable, just and fair society over the years, he has taken his human rights empowerment further by simplifying human rights laws and safeguards to the understanding of ordinary people on the street in English and major local languages including Pidgin, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba spoken by over 100 million people in Nigeria.

    The IBA award winner pioneered human rights empowerment via mobile technology when he created ‘Know Your Rights Nigeria’ app for millions of android, iPhone and web users in Nigeria.

    The app and the web version of his work simplify all human rights laws in force with safeguards in English, Pidgin, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba languages alongside platforms where users engage him and his team of over 50 lawyers daily for free legal support on human rights issues.

    The lawyer and UN Peace Ambassador also created platforms on the app where users report abuse anonymously, get safeguards on what steps to take in the face of assaults, and get connected to security forces for help, thereby pioneering the first ever human rights empowerment innovation with mere push of buttons in the palms in English and major local languages in the era of mobile technological advancement.

    Since the human right lawyer unveiled the app and web version for human rights empowerment, it has proved very effective for its free access, speedy dissemination of human rights information and free legal advisory with over 200,000 people as beneficiaries.

    Earlier this year, the U.S Consul General John Bray had commended Oyinlade and the work he has done “to strengthen respect and support for the protection of human rights in Nigeria”.

    At the continental level, through advocacy, the Nigerian human rights and international law expert has also proffered solutions to human rights issues in Africa.

    These include the South Sudan political crisis, the Central African Republic crisis, the Congo Democratic Republic armed conflict, and the Libyan peace talks, among others, with relative impact.

    He worked as a resource person to the African Union Commission on the implementation of African Youth Charters and delivered papers on how AU member states can reform local laws for the implementation of the charter.

    At the presentation of the award at Roma Convention Center La Nuvola, the conference venue on October 12, the IBA stated the prestigious award was for outstanding contribution by a Legal Practitioner to Human Rights in which Mr. Oyinlade came top among lawyers across the world.

    The IBA Human Rights Award honoree, while giving his remark, thanked the global lawyers’ body for the award and said such recognition is a charge to do more.

    “Recognition of this magnitude brings more responsibilities. Since the task that follows such responsibilities will give birth to deliverables and outcomes that will shape the world for better, I am happier and fully ready to carry on.

    “As it appears to me, we are not short of preachers against human rights abuse or short of preaching against serial violations of human rights. We are only short of compliance with the rule of law.

    “As the world is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this year, we all have more work to do to make the world fair and just.

    “The world is looking up to us (lawyers) to consistently use our legal expertise as a tool of social engineering and problem-solving.

    “I believe and hope that we shall continue to apply our knowledge of law as a glue that holds the society together,” he said.

    Oyinlade called on lawyers to take the leading role in expanding the frontiers of human rights.

    He is the first Nigerian lawyer to have won the IBA award for outstanding contribution by a legal practitioner to human rights.

    He is the second from Africa after George Bizos from South Africa who was recommended by many personalities.