By Ben Ezeamalu
A total of 5,839 lawyers have started receiving N10,000 as “their share of the COVID-19 pandemic relief,” Paul Usoro, the president of the Nigerian Bar Association has said.
In a statement Monday, Mr Usoro, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said the palliatives were made possible by mostly senior lawyers.
“These 5,839 younger colleagues constitute the first batch of the 1-4 years Post-Call young-lawyer recipients of these relief funds,” said Mr Usoro.
“I have already received directly and through third parties, including Branch Chairmen, messages of appreciation from the palliatives’ beneficiaries.”
Mr Usoro said the plan is to ensure that all the eligible lawyers receive their share of the relief fund not later than next week, the week of the NBA annual general conference.
“The slight delay in paying everyone is because we have had issues with the bank details of some of the eligible beneficiaries; these are being sorted out by the NBA National Secretariat directly with the lawyers.
“We also had a number of duplicated applications and unqualified applications (mainly lawyers who are overage including 2005 and 2008 Post-Call lawyers). These unqualified lawyers are being weeded out from the list of beneficiaries in order to share the palliatives only to the eligible lawyers i.e 1-4 years Post-Call lawyers.”
The NBA president thanked the donors for making the palliatives possible and added that the door is still open to those willing to contribute.
“Special thanks also go to the members of the NBA Welfare Committee for their selfless services. Apart from the fact that most of them also donated generously to the fund, none of the SAN members of the Committee accepted or asked for any allowance whatsoever for their Committee assignment.”