Petition to Withdraw Deputy Speaker's Law Certificate Dismissed as Legally Deficient

The legal team representing Nigeria's Deputy Speaker, the Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu, has strongly refuted a petition seeking the withdrawal of his qualifying certificate as a lawyer. In a detailed response submitted to the Council of Legal Education, Kalu's solicitors, from Olaniwun Ajayi LP Chambers, have characterized the petition as "fundamentally deficient in law" and urged its dismissal. The core of the challenge revolves around a claim that Kalu's attendance at the Nigerian Law School (NLS) and his participation in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) ran concurrently.

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Solicitors to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu, PhD, CFR have asked the Council of Legal Education to dismiss a petition seeking the withdrawal of his qualifying certificate as a lawyer, describing it as “fundamentally deficient in law.”

Kalu's legal representatives meticulously laid out their arguments, emphasizing that the Council of Legal Education, as a statutory body, can only exercise powers expressly granted to it. They assert that there is no "express statutory power conferred on the Council to ex post facto withdraw or cancel a qualifying certificate." Furthermore, they contend that the Council's disciplinary powers are narrowly defined and applicable only in cases of "manifest vitiating criminal conduct," a threshold they argue has not been met in Kalu's case. The solicitors highlighted that the declaration used by the petitioner was unsworn and thus carries no legal weight.

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There is “no express statutory power conferred on the Council to ex post facto withdraw or cancel a qualifying certificate.”

Crucially, the legal team addressed the alleged concurrency of NYSC and NLS participation. They argued that no statute, regulation, or binding institutional rule prohibited this overlap at the material time. Citing the Nigerian Law School Student Handbook for the 2010/2011 Academic Session, they noted the absence of any express prohibition. Therefore, they concluded, the petition's premise is legally unsound, as the conduct it targets was not prohibited by law when it occurred. This defense aims to protect Kalu's professional standing by demonstrating the lack of legal basis for the petition.

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No such conduct has been established against Kalu