I am endlessly enthralled by a recent viral social media story. A bright young man in Kenya became enamored of the legal profession by being in the vicinity of a law office and attending courts regularly to observe the ways of lawyers and judges. So, he assumed himself a...
Chidi Odinkalu
Prominent rights lawyer and one-time Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof Chidi Odinkalu, has challenged claims by former General-Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN, criticizing the recent requirement for newly cleared Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) to undergo security screening by...
On 6 December 1977, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s military Head of State, received a group of young men from Eastern Nigeria who had come to present him with a trophy won in a football contest against the rest of Africa. They were members of a football team known as Rangers International Football...
One month ago, in Abuja, a small circle of friends, literary enthusiasts, human rights activists, politicians, public intellectuals and thinkers gathered to listen to Chidi Odinkalu read from his latest offering, The Selectorate: When Judges Topple the People. It was a private reading, but the ideas Chidi graciously espoused belong...
With Joseph Chukwuma Otteh’s demise, Nigeria lost a highly influential lawyer dedicated to human rights observance in the country. PROF. CHIDI ODINKALU, in this piece, eulogises a quintessential lawyer of deep intellect, integrity, industry, honour, and empathy, who laboured to see justice brought to the poor and excluded in...