A Rivers State High Court sitting in Port Harcourt yesterday remanded a suspected fake lawyer, identified as Stanley Ejiroghene-Adjogbe, who has been practicing in the state for over ten years in police custody.
In his ruling, Justice Chinwendu Nwogu directed policemen from the office of the Commissioner of Police, Rivers State, to take custody of the suspect pending the outcome of their investigation.
Ejiroghene-Adjogbe was remanded following a request by the chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Port Harcourt branch, Prince Nyekwere, that the suspect may escape if he is allowed to go.
The Guardian gathered that the suspected fake lawyer was exposed during a cross-examination when he failed to correctly answer questions concerning his genuine identity as a legal practitioner.
Also, the suspect could not tell the court which law school he attended and the year he graduated as well as when he was called to the bar.
He also failed to disclose the university he attended as a law student.
The defence team in the matter further tendered reports from the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the National leadership of NBA disowning the identity of the suspect as a genuine legal practitioner in the country.
Chairman of NBA Port Harcourt branch, Prince Onyekwere explained the reasons he demanded that the suspected fake lawyer be remanded in Police custody.
He said: “His name is not found in our NBA database, of course, you know every lawyer in Nigeria has an enrollment number and the Supreme Court keeps that list of lawyers.
“Supreme Court has written that they do not have his name. What we did was to plead with the court to allow us to have an opportunity with him to produce his call to bar certificate. So, we will know whether both NBA and Supreme Court are making a mistake and we will correct that mistake, but we doubt it because it is quite unusual that NBA and Supreme Court will not have the name of the lawyer that was called to the bar in Nigeria.”
Also, Ibikiri Otorubio, who cross-examined the suspected fake lawyer in the case of a dud cheque explained that they suspected that the lawyer is fake because he did not know the penalty for issuing a dud cheque, whereas, he claims to be a senior lawyer.