Nigerian lawyer, Beluolisa Nwofor, stripped of his of "Senior Advocate of Nigeria" title

The Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee has withdrawn the Senior Advocate of Nigeria rank from a lawyer, Mr. Beluolisa Nwofor, who represented the Ali Modu Sheriff faction of the PDP in the legal battle for the party’s ticket ahead of last year’s governorship election in Ondo State.

The Sheriff faction had recorded a temporary victory by obtaining a judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja, which recognised the faction’s preferred aspirant, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, as the PDP’s governorship candidate for the said governorship poll.

The victory was truncated few days to the election when the Court of Appeal in Abuja in its judgment delivered on November 23, 2016, retrieved the ticket from Ibrahim and returned it to Eyitayo Jegede, who was the candidate of the rival Ahmed Makarfi-led faction of the party.

The LPPC, in a statement released late on Friday, described the conduct of Nwofor during the hearing of the case as “unbecoming of the holder of the esteemed rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria.”

It will be recalled that Nwofor had a rancorous encounter with the Justice Ibrahim Saulawa-led three-man panel during the hearing of the case by the Court of Appeal.

Specifically, the November 16, 2016 proceedings went on for over five hours in a tense courtroom charged by the confrontation between members of the Justice Saulawa-led panel and Nwofor.

Also before the conclusion of the case, Nwofor also on behalf of his client filed before the Supreme Court, two motions, one of which asked for a stay of the appeal court’s proceedings.

The second motion also sought an order disbanding the Justice Saulawa panel. Incensed by the motions which Nwofor filed on behalf of his clients, the Supreme Court after dismissing them, awarded cumulative fines of over N10m against the applicants and Nwofor, their lawyer, for filing the applications adjudged to have constituted an abuse of court process