Nigeria’s young lawyers are discovering a frightening truth: passing the Bar may bring a wig, certificate, and title—but absolutely no guarantee of a livelihood. Simply put, Nigeria’s legal profession is losing its shine: thousands enter with dreams of prestige, only to meet unemployment, poor pay, exploitation, and ethical decay.
I feel sad saying this because there was a time when the word “lawyer” carried weight in Nigeria. A lawyer walked into a room and people adjusted themselves. Parents introduced their children with pride. “My son is a lawyer.” “My daughter is going to Law School.” The wig meant learning. The gown meant dignity. The profession promised prestige, financial security and influence.
That was the advertisement.
Now let us discuss the product.
Today, when somebody tells me that law is still a “noble
profession” in Nigeria, I sometimes wonder whether nobility has changed its
definition. Perhaps nobility now means wearing a hot horsehair wig under the
Nigerian sun while calculating whether your transport fare to court will
swallow the appearance fee.
Welcome to the Bar.
Drinks are not included.
The uncomfortable truth exploded into public discussion
again when Nigerian social media activist Martins Vincent Otse, better known as
VeryDarkMan, attended the Nigerian Bar Association’s 66th Annual General
Conference in Port Harcourt. Some lawyers questioned why he should have been
invited. VeryDarkMan returned fire. He said law had become one of Nigeria’s
poorest professions and asked some wickedly simple questions: How many lawyers
have jobs? How many actually practise? How many regularly go to court?
Forget his theatrics for a moment. Forget whether you
like him. Forget the social-media noise.
Look at the wound, not the finger pointing at it.
Nigeria keeps producing lawyers by the thousands. In 2022
alone, the Body of Benchers admitted 1,504 new entrants in July and another
4,711 in December, making 6,215 new lawyers in those two ceremonies. In March
2024, another 4,412 successful candidates from the November 2023 Bar Final
Examination were scheduled for Call to Bar, alongside 14 candidates from
previous examinations.
That is not a trickle.
That is a conveyor belt.
Every year, another army marches out wearing black and
white, certificates in hand, parents taking photographs, everybody smiling as
though prosperity has just signed an affidavit.
Then Monday morning arrives. Reality removes its
sunglasses. Some graduates find proper legal employment. Some build successful
practices. Some enter government, banking, corporate compliance, academia,
consulting and politics. Let me make that clear because exaggeration is
unnecessary when reality already has sharp teeth.
But others discover that being called to the Bar does not
mean anybody is calling them for a job.
So the young lawyer improvises.
Today, he is Barrister Chukwuemeka.
Tomorrow, he is selling bedsheets on Instagram.
Barrister Amina starts a catering business.
Barrister Tunde becomes a Bolt or Uber driver.
Barrister Ngozi sells wigs, perfumes and handbags online.
Barrister Emeka becomes a real-estate agent, chasing
tenants and commissions around Lagos.
Another starts importing shoes.
Another becomes a Point of Sale (POS) operator.
There is nothing shameful about honest work. Let me say
that loudly. A person selling bedsheets honestly has more dignity than a lawyer
stealing a client’s money. A driver earning an honest living is worth more than
a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) buying justice through the back door.
The scandal is not the bedsheet.
The scandal is spending years studying law, surviving
university, paying for professional training, passing Bar examinations, being
ceremonially welcomed into a supposedly elite profession—and discovering that
the economy has no meaningful chair waiting for you.
The irony becomes darker when we examine what the
Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) itself has been doing. In 2023, Nigeria
introduced the Legal Practitioners’ Remuneration Order, replacing a
remuneration framework dating back to 1991. The Order established minimum
professional fees and prohibited lawyers from charging below prescribed rates
for covered services.
Why would a famously “noble” profession need an emergency
campaign to stop its own members from practically giving professional services
away?
Because prestige does not pay NEPA, the National Electric
Power Authority, which was the Nigerian
government agency responsible for generating and supplying electricity before
it was replaced by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2005.
The NBA Remuneration Committee has repeatedly warned
lawyers against undercharging. In 2025, it stressed that violating the
minimum-fee rules could amount to professional misconduct. By 2026, the NBA
Young Lawyers Forum was still demanding standardized remuneration, structured
employment, humane working conditions and a mandatory living wage if a pupilage
system were introduced. The forum specifically warned that pupilage must not become
another machine for exploiting young lawyers.
Read that again.
“Humane working conditions.”
“Living wage.”
We are discussing lawyers, not undocumented workers
hiding inside a factory.
And yet I am supposed to stand up, straighten my tie and
chant, “Law is a noble profession.”
Noble?
Please.
Even the 2023 Remuneration Order has struggled against
the economic realities it was created to cure. A 2026 scholarly analysis of its
implementation reported severe enforcement problems and estimated
non-compliance at more than 95% nationwide. The researchers identified weak
monitoring, client resistance and enforcement failures, with young lawyers
particularly exposed.
There lies the Nigerian contradiction.
We legislate dignity.
Then reality refuses to obey.
Compare this with the United States—not because America
is heaven, because it certainly is not, but because comparison exposes the
scale of the employment problem. The American Bar Association (ABA) reported
that among graduates of ABA-approved law schools in the Class of 2024, 33,931
graduates, representing 87.1%, obtained full-time, long-term jobs requiring Bar
admission or providing a J.D. advantage roughly 10 months after graduation.
Where is Nigeria’s equally transparent national
employment report showing what happens to every graduating class of lawyers 10
months after Call to Bar?
Show me the numbers.
Not speeches.
Not conference banners.
Not photographs of dignitaries wearing wigs.
Numbers.
How many are practicing?
How many are unemployed?
How many are earning a sustainable professional income?
How many have abandoned law?
How many are driving taxis, selling property, running
online shops, teaching secondary school, selling insurance or operating POS
stands?
Until we systematically measure those outcomes, calling
the profession “noble” can become less a description and more an incantation.
But unemployment and miserable remuneration are only half
of my quarrel with this nobility business.
There is also ethics.
That white wig has seen things. In 2018, Dr. Joseph
Nwobike, then a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), was convicted by a Lagos
State High Court on counts connected to attempting to pervert the course of
justice. The case involved efforts to influence court officials concerning the
assignment of cases to preferred judges. He was sentenced to imprisonment and
subsequently stripped of his SAN rank. The Court of Appeal upheld key parts of
his conviction in 2019.
That was not an unemployed young lawyer selling perfume. That
was a man who had reached one of the profession’s highest ranks.
Years earlier, the crisis had become so ugly that
prominent human-rights lawyer Femi Falana, SAN, publicly accused the NBA of
failing to confront corruption within the judiciary. During the controversy
surrounding the 2016 DSS raids on judges, Falana argued that shielding corrupt
judicial officers embarrassed honest members of the Bar.
Fast-forward to 2026 and the profession is still
wrestling with its mirror. The NBA Anti-Corruption Committee and the Legal
Practitioners Disciplinary Committee publicly called for stronger and faster
disciplinary action against unethical lawyers, citing delays and inconsistent
sanctions as threats to public confidence. Even Attorney-General Lateef
Fagbemi, SAN, warned in February 2026 that the prestige attached to the SAN
rank must never become immunity from discipline. He warned that ethical
breaches among senior lawyers and a culture of silence could destroy public trust.
That statement tells me everything.
You do not warn people against confusing prestige with
immunity unless somebody has been behaving as though prestige provides
immunity.
Then came an episode so absurd that satire almost became
unemployed.
In January 2026, NBA President Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN,
condemned the purported appointment of Abdulrasheed Maina as “Grand Patron of
NBA Garki Branch.” Maina had been convicted over the theft of more than ₦2
billion ($1.5 Million) in pension funds. The NBA president said the purported
appointment made a mockery of both the legal profession and Nigeria’s fight
against corruption and announced disciplinary proceedings against the branch
chairman responsible.
I could not invent better satire.
A legal association preaching the rule of law finds
itself publicly distancing the profession from an attempt to honor a man
convicted over stolen pension money.
And somebody still wants me to polish the word “noble.”
No.
I will call a spade a spade.
Law itself remains noble as an idea. Justice is noble.
Defending an innocent person is noble. Protecting constitutional rights is
noble. Standing between state power and an abused citizen is noble. Fighting
unlawful detention is noble. Helping a widow defend her property is noble.
Prosecuting corruption without fear is noble.
But a profession does not inherit nobility forever merely
because its textbooks say so.
Nobility must be earned daily.
A profession that produces thousands of graduates without
a sufficiently developed market to absorb them has a problem. A profession
whose young practitioners must demand a living wage has a problem. A profession
forced to create minimum-fee rules because practitioners are undercutting one
another into poverty has a problem. A profession whose own leadership
repeatedly complains about unethical conduct, weak discipline and threats to
public confidence has a problem. The wig cannot hide all that.
And this is where I think VeryDarkMan touched the
electric wire.
His delivery was crude. His language was provocative. His
claim that law is one of Nigeria’s “poorest professions” requires comprehensive
national income and employment data before anyone can responsibly treat it as
statistical fact. But underneath the noise sits an argument the legal
establishment cannot dismiss by simply shouting, “Noble profession!”
Young Nigerians are asking a colder question now.
“What will I eat?”
Prestige does not answer.
A certificate does not answer.
A photograph from Call to Bar does not answer.
The Nigerian Law School can manufacture new wigs faster
than the economy can manufacture good legal jobs, and eventually somebody must
admit that the mathematics is becoming uncomfortable.
The profession therefore faces a choice. It can protect
the mythology or repair the institution.
I would choose repair.
Because there is nothing noble about poverty dressed in a
gown.
There is nothing noble about exploitation hidden behind
professional tradition.
There is nothing noble about corruption wearing a wig.
And there is certainly nothing noble about telling a
struggling young lawyer to admire the prestige of a profession while he is
wondering whether his next court appearance will even cover transportation and
lunch.
So when somebody tells me, “Law is a noble profession,” I
will not quarrel.
I will simply ask:
“Noble for whom?”
For the established SAN with corporate retainers?
Perhaps.
For the politically connected lawyer moving between
boardrooms, election tribunals and government contracts?
Certainly possible.
But for the fresh graduate sending applications from
chamber to chamber while selling bedsheets at night?
The slogan sounds different.
Nigeria has enough ceremonies. Enough titles. Enough
gowns. Enough self-congratulation. What it needs is a legal profession in which
competence can produce a decent living, young lawyers are not exploited,
ethical misconduct carries real consequences, and justice cannot be treated
like merchandise.
Until then, the wig may remain white.
But nobody should confuse its color with innocence.
On a different but
equally important note, readers who enjoy thoughtful analysis may also find the
titles in my “Brief Book Series”
worth exploring. You can also read them here on Google Play, or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.
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