Posted on Mar 10, 2020
A former Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NAILS), Prof. Epiphany Azinge (SAN), has said the country does not have enough lawyers to serve its population.
According to him, the legal and other related services required by the nearly 120 million people cannot be met by the about 120,000 lawyers in the country.
Azinge spoke during the ground breaking of the late Justice Chike Idigbe Law Faculty and eighth convocation of the Veritas University, Abuja.
He said: “Nigeria is grossly under-prepared for legal litigations and other related services when the statistics of about 120,000 lawyers are compared to the nation’s population of nearly 200 million people.
“There are so many yearning gaps here and there that I believe the law faculty through serious research can feel and we are happy that this is coming up.
“Generally, we feel the more lawyers in the system the better, not just because they want to go to court to litigate but because there are so many areas lawyers can be useful in life.
“Whether in the court system, whether in the academia, whether in the corporate world, whether in the administrative enterprises, whether in governance or in the National Assembly where you have so many of them holding sway.”
According to him, the faculty would not only churn out lawyers but also give them a good moral quality in line with the Catholic university’s nature.