A Nigerian lawyer, Izu Aniagu has started a petition seeking to strip the Attorney-General of the Federation, AGF and the Minister for Justice Abubakar Malami of his SAN title over some wrongdoings levelled against him.
In the petition titled “Sign to strip Nigeria’s AGF, the lawyer noted that Malami has continually disobeyed court order since assumption of office as the AGF.
Also, Malami was accused of engaging in lacklustre prosecution, failure to prosecute, corruption, bias against his person, shielding of suspects and general dereliction of duty among other allegations.
The lawyer noted that Malami deleted the provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct which provide for stamp and seal as well as bar practising fee for government lawyers without conveying any meeting as the president of The Bar Council.
In the petition which has garnered 973 signatures as at the time of filing this report, the AGF was accused of taking the decision alone hence posing a threat to the rule of law.
According to the statement issued by Aniagu, the AGF does not have such power as section 12 (4) of the LPA gives the General Council of the Bar power to make any such amendment and make other decisions concerning the NBA.
It was gathered that the amendment occurred less than a week after a splinter group known as the New Nigerian Bar Association wrote a petition to Malami, asking to be recognised by the Federal Government.
You will recall that the new group of lawyers emerged after Governor El-Rufai was removed from the list of speakers in the last NBA conference (Read more here).
