The Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) Annual General Conference, held in Port Harcourt this week, has been dubbed a catastrophe by many of the attendees according to reports.
Many lawyers in attendance are blaming the NBA President Austin Alegeh for subjecting them to “untold hardships” according to one media report.
One attendee told The Nigerian Lawyer news site “the majority of us are yet to collect our conference bags. The few that were lucky only connected (inferior) bags without contents in them.”
This same lawyer said that the organization of the conference was so disastrous that the program guides, which would have helped lawyers know which sessions to attend, were simply not available and lead to confusion.
One senior lawyer told The Nigerian Lawyer reporters “after paying 65k for the registration I have no conference bag to show for it. Same with last year’s conference after paying 50k, this I find so reprehensible.”
Chidi Odinkalu, a notable human rights attorney, suggested that conference organizing should be outsourced to professionals and no longer done in house. He also said “in all honesty, this conference bag thing is an anachronism. Many of us go to conferences outside Nigeria where there are no bags. We don’t complain. I have got tired of collecting in Nigerian conferences. They create clutter. We should aim to upgrade the quality of our organising. We can do it.”
