Chairman, Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, in Benin City, Nosa Edo-Osaie has called on the 13 political parties and their candidates participating in the forthcoming governorship election to ensure that they play by the rules to avoid a breakdown of law and order.
Edo-Osagie stated this at the opening ceremony of the Annual Law Week of the branch also known as the Lion Bar with the theme, “Law as a tool for economic advancement and national security.”
According to him, “The political parties and the their candidates must play by the rules and Incidentally there are some of the candidates who are members of the NBA, what is critical to the NBA is that they must play the game by the rules otherwise we will have consequences, anarchy is not what we crave for in the society, because when there is anarchy, there is a bigger problem than you expect. So for all those aspirants in the field, they must by necessity play by the rules”.
The association also invited some of the candidates including Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Olumide Akpata of Labour Party, LP, who are both members of the NBA, Senator Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and Isaiah Osifo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA.
Earlier, the chairman of the planning committee of the Week, Paschal Ugbome said the theme was chosen to reflect the current realities in the country and that solutions would also be proffered at the end of the day.
Ugbome said “We have chosen the topic, which is topical in our nationhood, which is economic advancement and national security. These two issues today, are capable of either moving us forward as a nation or making us remain static or totally collapsing as a nation. As lawyers, we decided to look at it from the prism of law because we believe that law is a pivot on which these two issues rotate. We will interrogate how we have fared as lawyers, how where the law itself has failed as an instrument for economic advancement to guarantee national security. We believe we will come out with a way forward on these issues at the end of the Week.”
In his goodwill message, Governor Godwin Obaseki who was represented by the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi said the theme of the weeklong activity is apt and that in encouraging investment and economic advancement “we must examine our legal framework with the possibility of reforming it to ensure it is fit for the realities”.