Falana rejects defense of VDM’s conference role, demands experienced speakers

Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has criticised the Nigerian Bar Association for inviting social media activist, Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan, to speak at its annual conference.

Falana made his position known in an interview with Channels Television on Thursday while commenting on the controversy that followed VDM’s appearance at the NBA’s 66th Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt, where he spoke on insecurity.

The senior lawyer argued that speakers invited to address lawyers should have relevant expertise or experience in the subject being discussed, saying the NBA’s conferences should be platforms for intellectual engagement rather than entertainment.

He said, “In those days, the NBA brought individuals who had paid their dues, who were coming to engage lawyers intellectually. We wanted to learn from them, and so the NBA was not… none of our conferences was a side show in the past.”

Falana said the choice of speakers should be guided by the subject of discussion, particularly when dealing with specialised issues such as national security.

“So, if you are bringing an expert to discuss the security of the country, either from the private or public sector, such an individual must have contributed to the security architecture of the country,” he said.

He added that inviting people without relevant experience to discuss specialised subjects could undermine the purpose of the conference.

“But when you bring people who have nothing to do with the security of the country, there are problems. It’s like talking about media freedom, press freedom—you are going to bring practitioners in that field, whether in the academics or in the newsroom. But to just go and bring somebody from nowhere to come and entertain you, there are problems with that,” Falana said.

His comments followed the presenter’s reference to arguments by some lawyers, including Professor Chidi Odinkalu, who defended VDM’s invitation as an opportunity for the legal profession to receive feedback from members of the public who interact with the justice system.

Responding, Falana said Odinkalu’s position applied more broadly to public engagement but did not necessarily justify inviting a speaker without relevant expertise to address a specialised topic.

“With profound respect to my very good friend Chidi Odinkalu, he was talking in the general sense. We’re talking of this particular case,” Falana said.

He acknowledged the importance of lawyers engaging members of the public but maintained that discussions on specialised security matters should involve people with direct knowledge or experience of the subject.

“If we are talking about justice delivery in the country, we now want to hear from members of the public, that will have been okay. But if you are talking about the security of the country, it does require that you bring people who are involved in maintaining the security of the country, or who are victims of abductions and the rest of them,” he said.

Falana said the NBA should return to what he described as the intellectual tradition of its conferences, recalling presentations by prominent legal figures that generated public debate beyond the events themselves.

“In those days—in those days, the submissions of some of our lecturers, like the late Dr. Akinola Aguda when he addressed us in 1985, or the late Justice Oputa when he addressed our conference in 1987—for several days and weeks, their submissions became matters of public discourse,” he said.

“Editorial comments were written on them, lawyers debated them even after the conference, and we learned from them. And I think lawyers, as I said, we should go back to that era.”

Falana also said the NBA should carefully consider the credentials of political leaders invited to speak on democracy and the rule of law, arguing that their records in office should be subjected to scrutiny.

He said, “So if you’re going to have a former head of state to address lawyers to talk about democracy or rule of law, then you must bring someone who can say, ‘When I was in power, there was not a single court order that I disobeyed, I didn’t lock up people illegally, I didn’t harass the media,’ and so on and so forth.”

The controversy over VDM’s appearance at the conference has continued to generate reactions, particularly following his allegations concerning the conduct of security personnel in relation to kidnapping and insecurity in the country.