A professional dispute has erupted in Nigeria’s legal sector after the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) openly rejected a directive from the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, prohibiting practitioners from using the title “Barrister”.
The controversy follows a 13 July 2026 memorandum issued by Supreme Court Chief Registrar Kabir Akanbi, which instructed legal practitioners, court registrars, and litigation staff to immediately drop the prefix “Barrister” in all official dealings with the apex court. The court stated the measure was designed to elevate professional standards. In its place, the directive recommended adopting “Esquire” or “Esq.” as a suffix.
However, the NLS has pushed back against the order, insisting it lacks statutory foundation. Speaking through Executive Director Dr Tonye Jaja in a statement on Wednesday, the association argued that neither the Legal Practitioners Act of 1962 nor any existing law empowers the CJN, the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC), or the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to mandate such changes.
While acknowledging that using “Barrister” alone omits the “Solicitor” aspect of a lawyer’s dual qualification, Jaja pointed out that “Using ‘Barrister’ as a title is a half-truth that leaves out the title of ‘Solicitor'”. Crucially, he noted that alternative terms like “Esquire” or even “Barrister-At-Law” or “Attorney-At-Law” “do not appear inside the Legal Practitioners Act, 1962”.
Highlighting what it termed institutional inconsistency, the NLS accused the judiciary’s leadership of double standards regarding non-statutory titles. The society referenced the “Blue Silks” Senior Counsel of Nigeria (SCN) rank, conferred by the NLS and the Body of Senior Counsel of Nigeria (BOSCON), which has faced opposition from the LPPC and Federal High Court rulings for lacking explicit mention in the 1962 Act.
According to the NLS, the judiciary is applying selective logic by outlawing a title recognised in statute while endorsing another unlisted term. Jaja labeled it “an act of contradiction and hypocrisy” to ban a title present in the Legal Practitioners Act and replace it with options absent from the law. He added that allowing titles like “Esquire” while suppressing others such as the SCN rank amounts to unlawful discrimination under Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution.
The NLS further argued that absence from statutory text does not render a title illegal. Jaja recalled that even the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) title was not created out of thin air by local statutes, but was adopted in 1975 from the British King’s Counsel tradition dating back to the 1500s.
By contrast, he maintained that the SCN title derives its validity from legitimate operational guidelines backed by Section 40 of the Constitution and Section 19 of the National Assembly Service Commission Act 2014.