The legal team of the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu, has urged the Council of Legal Education to dismiss a petition seeking the withdrawal of his qualifying certificate as a lawyer, describing the petition as “fundamentally deficient in law.”
In a letter dated April 28, 2026, signed by Chukwuebuka S. Okeke of Olaniwun Ajayi LP, Kalu’s solicitors responded to a petition filed by one John Aikpokpo Martins, which alleged that Kalu’s law school attendance and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme ran concurrently.
Three Grounds for Dismissal
Kalu’s legal team argued:
No express statutory power: The Council, created under the Legal Education Act, has no express power to retroactively withdraw a certificate.
No criminal conduct: The Council’s disciplinary powers apply only to “manifest vitiating criminal conduct,” which has not been established against Kalu.
No prohibition on concurrency: No known statute or regulation at the material time barred simultaneous NYSC and Law School attendance. The Nigerian Law School Student Handbook for 2010/2011 contained no such prohibition.
The solicitors insisted that the petition lacks a “legally cognisable foundation” and asked the Council to decline jurisdiction, just as the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) had previously dismissed similar claims for lack of merit.
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