Senior Advocate of Nigeria Femi Falana on Thursday questioned the invitation of content creator Martin Otse, known online as VeryDarkMan, to serve as a panelist at the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference. Falana said the NBA has traditionally invited speakers with established expertise and experience.
“In those days, the NBA brought individuals who had paid their dues and who came to engage lawyers intellectually. We wanted to learn from them, and none of our conferences was a circus show in the past,” he said.
Otse appeared as a panelist at the NBA’s 66th Annual General Conference on Tuesday during a session titled “Known Gunmen or Unknown Gunmen.”
“So, if you are bringing in an expert to discuss the security of the country, whether from the private or public sector, that individual must have contributed to the country’s security architecture,” Falana said. “But when you bring people who have nothing to do with the security of the country, there are problems.”
He likened the decision to inviting someone without relevant professional experience to speak to journalists about press freedom.
“It’s like talking about media freedom or press freedom. You should bring practitioners in that field, either from academia or the newsroom. But to just bring somebody from nowhere to come and entertain you — there are problems with that,” he added.
Falana made the remarks on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, arguing that discussions on national security at the NBA conference should include people with established professional experience in the country’s security architecture.
