‘Law is a Vast Area and There is Room Enough for Everybody’
My name is Emmanuel Onyedi Wingate. I am a Senior Associate in the Commercial Dispute Resolution and Energy Practice Groups of Sterling Partnership, Legal Practitioners. I hold an Honours Degree in Law from the University of Nigeria where I was President of the Law Students’ Association and I attended the Nigerian Law School.
Have you had any challenges in your career as a lawyer and if so what were the main challenges?
I have not had any peculiar challenges. Law is a jealous wife. I knew what I was going into when I decided to become a lawyer.
What was your worst day as a lawyer? My worst day as a lawyer yet was representing an illiterate deaf defendant being tried for narcotics related offences at the Federal High Court on a pro bono basis. The court struck out all the fine jurisprudential points on his inability to stand trial because of his lack of understanding of sign language except for signs which were merely descriptive, uncertain and therefore inadequate, and even went ahead to admit evidence purportedly thumb printed by the defendant without the endorsement of an illiterate’s jurat despite our protestations. It was saddening.
What was your most memorable experience?
The day I was told I was promoted to Senior Associate when I thought I still had about five years to get there. It was a validation of the exceptional skills I was told I had.
Who has been most influential in your life?
My late mum, Josephine Ezirike Atiodo, has had the most influence in my life. She loved reading. She taught me to read all by herself and indulged me with much reading time. I am the lawyer I am today because I read all the time.
Why did you become a lawyer? Military rule. Growing up, while others lived fairly normal lives I read a lot; mainly newspapers, magazines and novels. In those days, Nigeria was one day, one trouble. Hardly a day passed without a feature article on something the military had done and why the military needed to go for Nigeria to be better. And lawyers were always mentioned. I particularly liked Newswatch and the late Gani Fawehinmi SAN was often featured. I figured I would be like Gani Fawehinmi SAN and the dream to become a lawyer stuck. I remember my LLB Long Essay submitted to the University of Nigeria was on the “Liberty Limiting Excesses of Arrests in Nigeria”. My firm is a commercial law firm. I could indeed have chosen to simply do transactions, which occupies the pride of place in our practice, but from the very beginning I gravitated towards the Commercial Dispute Resolution Practice Group. That is, also, perhaps the reason I have zealously thrown myself into my firm’s impressive access to justice work.
What would your advice be to anyone wanting a career in law?
Law is a vast area and there is room enough for everybody. Whatever your skill set, with diligence and hard work you will find a place.
If you had not become a lawyer, what would you have chosen?
A print journalist. I love reading and I can write.
Where do you see yourself in ten years? I hope to have taken silk Deo Volenti and made partner in my firm. I look also to becoming a prominent Bar Leader, in order to drive my interest in the standardisation of legal practice. That is the only way to improve the conditions of practice for our young lawyers who face challenges of poor conditions of service. Senior members of the Bar, I believe, are paying lip service to the challenges young lawyers face, mainly poor wages. Many young lawyers literarily slave for so-called respectable seniors. It is important to address this because not only is it the root cause of the much touted falling standards of law practice in Nigeria, it also puts ethical standards in jeopardy and by extension puts the general public at risk. The previous model whereby senior lawyers claim their younger colleagues learn under them and should therefore wait until they become principals in their own right before earning their livelihoods just would not work in present day Nigeria. It was possible in those days because there were fewer lawyers and therefore enough briefs to go round, if a junior angrily stumped out of his principal’s office and then hung a tiny wooden sign outside a ramshackle office announcing himself as “Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria” briefs came. In any case, why continue age-old practices many agree ensue hardship? Because slavery was once legitimate do we continue in slavery? My agenda, is to create standards that must be met by law firms. The Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee can even kick start it by providing that in addition to the standards already listed, an applicant for the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria should for the preceding five years have been senior member of a firm of at least ten lawyers with a minimum wage structure similar, at least, to those obtainable in the Ministries of Justice and proven to have had this structure in place for at least, the preceding five years. All SANs must maintain this structure and it should be possible for any junior to bring an action for backlog of wages that did not correspond with the structure. I hope within the next ten years to be in a position where I am capable of driving reforms along this lines.