First Catholic Church Priest, Rev. Father Edwin Obiora, to become a SAN opens up

Reverend (Dr) Edwin Obiora’s passion for academics made him the first ever Reverend Father in the Commonwealth to become a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN. In this interview he speaks about these politics and other issues

In the past, it was strange or like a taboo for a Reverend Father to be a legal practitioner. What has changed?

No. It has been there in the beginning and you remember St Paul made it clear in the Scriptures that he was a preacher of the Gospel and still had his own profession or occupation.

So the church had always recognised that priests are given to own or belong to a profession. You can be a reverend father and also a professor in university.

So it has been there for a long time. I also want to disabuse the minds of the public that it is not a must that you should have another means of livelihood. You are primarily ordained as a priest to preach and minister the Gospel and administer the sacrament and also take care of their spiritual welfare.

However, some priests are permitted to take up other occupations or professions and all are part of the ministering of the Gospel.

But among Africans they see the legal profession as one that has occultist undertones?

It is not an issue of how people see it but what the facts are. It is not true that when a lawyer dies he is buried face down and it is not also correct that only people who belong to a certain organization be it occult or otherwise become lawyers. We have very good Christians both Catholics and Anglicans who are lawyers and it doesn’t make them members of cult groups. Many of them are even judges and many of them are Senior Advocates.

Today you are a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. How did it come about?

It was on December 18, 2021 that it all happened. The process is very stringent and there is no compromise to the standards in any form or manner.

To be a Senior Advocate of Nigeria is more like a conferment of excellence and diligence in the legal practice and I think from all indications it is the only National Honors given to a profession of this nature. You know that the judiciary is the third arm of government and it is the only arm of government that does that and no other. So it is all about hard work and there are certain basic requirements before your name is even short listed in the first place and that is the situation.

My becoming a Senior Advocate and Reverend Father means that no Catholic Priest in the Commonwealth, be it Canada or even England, has become a Queen’s Counsel which is what we call the Senior Advocate of Nigeria. From our research, no Catholic Priest has become a Senior Advocate and you will recall that before now it was not allowed for Priests or Pastors to become lawyers but now the case is different.

How are you going to combine the two challenges?

I don’t think it is a challenge at all. I think it is confirmation of the burden already gone through because the rank of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria shows the challenges have been there since so it is not a challenge that is new to us .I have been in that challenge for so long . I was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1991 and I have been in active service ever since. I studied Law from the scratch to the highest academic level.

For instance I got my LLB from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, LLM from Cornell University, New York, JSD, that is Doctor of Jurostics from the same Cornell University and other allied qualifications like BL or Diploma in International law and so if you combine that with other degrees that I have such as Bachelor of Philosophy and Theology. You can say that I have about six university degrees and two diplomas and I have been in practice in New York under a very large law firm; the Harris Beach which has over 150 lawyers practicing there and eventually I was in charge of International litigation with some lawyers under me and from there I went into private practice in New York and later so many things went under and I had to come back to Nigeria and open a law firm near St Patrick’s Catholic Cathedral Awka. The major trust of the firm is for the poor among us and we have to investigate and be convinced that you cannot sustain the services of a lawyer and know that he is poor. We will follow the case from the lower court to the Supreme Court.

How do you see the judiciary system in Nigeria?

It is horrible how the judiciary is being hounded and judges are being harassed   by   politicians and when you do that you destroy the judicial system in Nigeria. When you destroy it you have destroyed the nation. Anybody who tries to insult a judge is insulting the nation and that is not good at all. Politicians have this bag for not respecting the rule of law and some of them do not even obey judicial pronouncements.

Our judiciary should be independent and that is the beginning of respecting the rule of law. This rascality of security operatives going to the house of judges to arrest or intimidate judges is a rape of the judicial system and the process.

This is an act of obtaining justice through the back door and that is not justice at all. The executive should allow the judges to do their job and uphold the law of the land. But I must also commend our judges for being firm in the discharge of their statutory functions as the last hope of the common man. We need to stand up for justice, equity and good conscience and ensure that the right of a common Nigerian is protected under law.

How about the church and politics?

They have roles to play in our society and their roles are for the good of the society, but people should not abuse it by using the church to play politics or using religion as a weapon of politics.

This is exactly what we see in our judicial system where the leaders choose to use the judicial system to play politics and if the judge insists on the law they try to accuse him or her of being biased and place charges against the judge.

This is our country and our nation and if we continue to abuse the system it would adversely affect us and the common man in the street. It is our prayers that things would change for the better and not just politicians but everyone should work towards making the system work for the good of all. (Sunday Telegraph )