Too Many Silks, Too Little Prestige

Following the shortlisting of 89 candidates for the conferment of the prestigious rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria for the 2026 exercise, analysts are calling on the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, to sanitise the selection process to restore the rank’s dwindling glory, Davidson Iriekpen writes.

Last month, the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) shortlisted 89 candidates for the conferment of the prestigious rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) for the 2026 exercise. The list comprises 77 legal practitioners under the advocacy category and 12 academics who have advanced to the final stage of the annual SAN conferment process.

The committee said it found that the candidates passed several assessment stages, including the advocates’ first and second filtration exercises, academic pre-qualification, academic first attrition exercise, independent appeals hearing, and chambers inspection.

The LPPC cautioned that inclusion on the short list does not amount to a successful application. It therefore invited the general public “to comment on the integrity, reputation, and competence of the shortlisted candidates.”

The committee asked members of the public to submit comments to the Office of the Secretary, Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee, Supreme Court, Abuja, by July 15.

It said any “complaint or adverse representation against a candidate must be accompanied by a verifying affidavit deposed to by the author before a superior court of record in Nigeria or before a notary public in Nigeria.” The committee added that such comments or complaints must be submitted in 20 copies.

The rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria is the highest distinction conferred on legal practitioners in Nigeria. It is awarded annually to lawyers and academics who have distinguished themselves in legal practice, legal scholarship, and contributions to the development of the legal profession.

Members of the Inner Bar, as SANs are fondly called, enjoy privileges, including reserved seats in the front rows of all courts and priority for their cases. They are also distinguishable from other lawyers by their attire, called ‘silk ‘, which is styled differently from the gown worn by other lawyers.

However, many legal practitioners have raised concerns over the new conditions for lawyers wishing to attain the rank. They raised concerns because the number of lawyers assigned by the LPPC for the award has been increasing for three consecutive years, while the quality has been declining.

In 2025, 72 candidates were shortlisted. While many thought the number would go down this year, it has rather increased.

Although LPPC announced in 2022 that the application for SAN rank would carry a non-refundable processing fee of N600,000, THISDAY has learnt that the amount has since been increased to over N1million.

This has sparked concern among lawyers, who decried what they called the “commercialisation” and “politicisation” of the bar’s highest honour and privilege, similar to the United Kingdom’s inner bar rank, known as the Queen’s Counsel (QC).

While people have different views about the rank, depending on which side of the divide they stand, some want it abolished completely as they deem it an unfair trade practice to confer special privileges on certain persons by way of ranking. Others believe that it is good to encourage healthy competition, but that substantial reform is required to make it strictly merit-based and transparent.

Lawyers who spoke to THISDAY said the award of the SAN rank was supposed to be based on proven integrity by those who had developed the hard work and legal skills required. They lamented that the manner in which the award is being conferred now leaves much to be desired.

Some of the lawyers who did not want their names in print called for a review of the guidelines for the award of the prestigious rank. They bemoaned the huge sums required to apply for the rank.

“Over N1,000,000 is just the amount; when the committee comes to inspect the offices of applicants and their libraries, they do get much more than that,” said a lawyer.

In the UK, where Nigeria copied the SAN title, the rank of QC or KC, depending on the gender of the monarch, which was first established in 1597, has about 1,600 to 1,900 members, while in Nigeria, where SAN was established in 1975, over 1,250 lawyers have been conferred with the title.

Observers believe that with the large number of SANs churned out every year, the title has not only lost quality and value, but that the number of those holding the title would exceed that of ordinary lawyers in the near future.

“The prestigious award has been bastardised and compromised. It is losing its value and quality because it is now given to all Tom, Dick and Harry. As with everything else, it is now going to the highest bidders. It has also been tribalised and based on quota, and this has reduced the prestige attached to the rank,” a SAN told THISDAY.

“I think for a moment that if there was a qualifying exam to become a SAN, do you think we would have a large number of them like we have today? How many consultants and specialists do we have in the medical and other fields today? Of course, they are all few. You know why? Because they write very rigorous examinations. But to become a SAN, there are no exams,” another SAN said.

Even the sharp increase in the number of senior advocates has not gone down well with the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN). After the release of the list of lawyers shortlisted for the rank in 2020, BOSAN wrote a letter to the then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, urging him not to elevate any lawyer to the premium rank until 2024 to enable them to revamp the elevation process.

The body criticised the 2020 elevation process for conferring the rank on an unprecedented 72 senior lawyers. It warned that unless the LPPC undertook a holistic review of the process, the rank risked losing its prestige and standing among stakeholders. It pledged its members’ commitment to providing expertise and support at every stage of the review process.

However, this alarm was ignored as the number of SANs continued to increase.

In 2021, the Supreme Court placed what were supposed to be fresh hurdles for lawyers seeking to be conferred with the rank.

Among other requirements, the applicants were to face a panel of selected serving retired Supreme Court justices and senior lawyers for an oral interview as part of the final stage of the screening process. During the oral interview, applicants will be subjected to rigorous questioning to verify the claims in their application forms.

But THISDAY gathered that the selection process is still characterised by influence-peddling, favouritism, bigotry, and bribery, among other issues. Analysts have proposed that candidates must demonstrate active, successful litigation across multiple superior courts of record, including High Courts and the Supreme Court, to prevent the elevation of lawyers who only handle political, election petition, or single-witness cases.

Recently, a retiring justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Addu Aboki, called on the CJN and the LPPC to review the requirements for conferring the rank to reduce unnecessary pressure on the court. He confirmed that undue pressure was mounted on the Justices of the Supreme Court by lawyers seeking the title.

Also, another retired Justice of the Supreme Court recently attributed the overcrowding of appellate court dockets to lawyers’ pursuit of SAN elevation.

Presently, every candidate who desires to be elevated to SAN is required to have at least five concluded judgments of the Court of Appeal and four concluded judgments of the Supreme Court.

Out of desperation, it is now believed that lawyers fund appeals and even revive dead ones to secure the minimum number of judgments to ground their application for elevation.

This is why many are suggesting that the LPPC should raise the qualification for SAN to 15 or 20 years post-call.

In 2022, Mr. Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN) proposed some far-reaching reforms to both the Supreme Court and LPPC.

According to him, the court cases to be relied upon in selecting successful applicants should span many areas of legal practice, including civil cases such as land law, chieftaincy, commercial law, election petitions, matrimonial causes, constitutional law, and criminal trials, as well as other areas of law.

“We should not have a Senior Advocate who only conducted election petitions or one who only attended to NDLEA or EFCC cases with only one witness who pleaded guilty and was summarily convicted, or those who handled only political cases. How do we have a SAN who cannot conduct a criminal trial? In the same vein, the cases should cover all the superior courts of record, such as the High Court, Federal High Court and the National Industrial Court and indeed the appellate courts,” he explained.

Adegboruwa further said: “Why should a law teacher apply for the rank of SAN if he has never practised and has no intention ever to practise law? This does not detract from the value of law teachers, but that career path is entirely different from courtroom advocacy. Law teachers who also practise law as advocates should apply only for the rank of advocate.

“For all categories of awardees, none should be considered for the rank if he/she is not an active member of any of the sections of the NBA, has not attended at least five consecutive meetings of his local NBA and provided concrete evidence of active participation in NBA affairs,” he added.

Many lawyers and analysts hope the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, will address the selection process for Senior Advocates of Nigeria to prevent the title from losing its prestige.