Today, I begin reflections on what we need to do to make the next 50 years more rewarding than the last. I want to start with professional excellence.

The news of the action of the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) temporarily stripped the former Attorney General of Federation, Michael Aondoakaa, of the honor of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) bring back to national discourse the importance of professional virtue and ethics to national development.

The legal profession is waking up to the need to restore virtues and ethics to the profession. This may redound to something great for Nigeria as we work towards the next 50 years.

The professions have always been the modeler of excellence in the public sphere. The legal profession has played a key role in promoting the ideals of rule of law and justice. The medical profession has not just saved lives. It has also promoted the virtues of physical and emotional care.

The profession of teaching has also promoted the values of knowledge and curiosity. The accounting profession promotes the virtues of prudence and accountability even as its practitioners help private and public institutions balance their books.

Collectively, the professions help to engender the culture of excellence in a society. They enthrone, through their professionalism, the values and virtues that define an open and free society. The relationship between professionalism and social, economic and political development is very obvious to merit comments.

Lawrence Harrison, in his book “The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself”, provides evidence of how culture and cultural values affect the development and retardation of societies.

He argues that societies that exhibit positive values and norms travel on the development curve faster.

Let me quote Harrison on the relationship between such values that are encoded in professionalism and development: “The rigor of the ethical code profoundly influences several other factors including rule of law/corruption, radius of identification and trust, and association.

While these latter three factors fall under “social behavior” the ethical code engenders behaviors that nurture trust and trust is central to economic efficiency”. The classical sociologist, Max Weber, has earlier articulated the relationship between the development of effective bureaucracy in Western Europe and what he called ‘protestant ethics’, those values and norms that define the Judeo Christian worldview.

Incidentally, these values and norms are encoded in the ethics of the professions.
Focusing the virtues and values of professionalism on the legal profession, Professor Anthony T.Kronman, argues in the book, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession, that the demise of the lawyer-statesman has led to the decline of the United States.

He describes the lawyer-statesman not only in terms of expertise and skills, but more so in terms of character and dispositions. He argues that the lawyer-statesman is “a paragon of judgment, and other look to him on account of his extraordinary deliberative power”.

This power is not just about a clever knack or skill. It is a trait of character. He defines character as “an ensemble of settle disposition- of habitual feelings and desires.

To have a character of a certain sort is to possess a set of such dispositions that are identifiable and distinct”. Kronman’s argument is that such dispositions improve the quality of the society.

And where they are absent or undermined, society loses a great deal We don’t need to look far to see what happens to a society that gives short shrift to the ethics of professionalism.

The recent financial crisis that has engulfed the world derives its roots in the gradual erosion of the ethic of professionalism amongst some of the professional undertakers of what has become known as ‘Casino capitalism’.

These ‘Professionals’ forgot the fundamental rules of their professions and cocked records that deceived investors and crashed the edifice of international finance. The ruins of such corporate giants like Worldcom, Enron, and Prudential Insurance.

Their malfeasances reinforce the importance of professional virtues and values in reorienting society and keeping it in the right direction.

In Nigeria we have had our own experiences of the dangerous consequence of the erosion of professional virtues and values. We experienced it with the collapse of the finance houses during the military and the recent bank failure. In the recent bank failure we heard of stories of bank CEOs who looted the funds of the banks while not creating values for shareholders and customer.

Their CEOs reckless greed led to massive loss of savings and deposits of customers. This recklessness would have been avoided or controlled if the managers of other  people’s fund exercised the duty of care enshrined in the banking profession.

Pervasive corruption has worked its havoc most with professionals like lawyers, journalists and accountants. Anyone who opens the books of proceedings in courts and take evidence from lawyers and clients would sunder at the malfeasance of those who pride themselves with belonging to the noble profession.

Many lawyers advise criminals in power on how to loot public treasuries. The most decorated senior lawyer is the one whose first legal strategy is to bribe the judges.
Today, Nigerian litigants know what to look for in hiring a lawyer- ask for the one who has demonstrating skills in bribing judges.

I was cut to heart when a legislator who lost his election petition complained that her opponent procured judgment by donating prostitutes to Judges. The corruption of judges is now a national security crisis. Everyone knows that many judges offer judgment to the highest bidder.

Venerable senior lawyer, Afe Babalola, SAN, could not hold himself any longer and spilled the beans about the corruption of judges. Many lawyers who should know agreed with him but opined that he belongs to the privileged clique that has sustained this criminality.

If I am the head of EFCC my first job will be to go after judges. It is simple to get them. Just check the bank accounts and property profile. Fighting corrupt judges and lawyers should be a priority agenda of the NBA. This is how to be socially responsible.

The future of Nigeria in the next 50 years will largely depend on the capacity of these professions to rediscover their virtues and values. We need symbolic and strategic actions that will announce to members of these professions that they will be held accountable for unprofessional conducts.

The professionals must be people of character and positive civic disposition to make any positive impact on public institutions. Professional groups must also rediscover professional excellence and virtues to have any chance of making important contributions toward the new Nigeria of public accountability.

The professions must get back to professional excellence to become the drivers of virtue and excellence in public governance. The challenge of development is partly a challenge of restoring professional virtues in the professions in Nigeria. The accounting and legal professions should be frontrunners in this commitment to restoration of professional virtues and excellence in its practice.

By modeling professionalism and being creative and civically engaged with its accounting and legal expertise they can help Nigeria to develop the institutions and values that underwrite accountability in public governance. We can change Nigeria. But this change begins with each of us- every professional- demanding accountability from one another and giving accountability to one another.

The supply and demand of accountability will establish a social equilibrium that will make Nigeria become the country of our dream.

Dr. Sam Amadi Abuja, Nigeria