Lawyers, civil society groups and media executives converged in Benin, the Edo State capital on November 30, 2022, to launch the Nigeria chapter of the Public Interest Lawyering Initiative for West Africa (PILIWA).
Membership of the initiative, which was founded in 2016 cuts across nine West African countries including Cote d’ Ivoire, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Mali and Niger, among others and supports young lawyers interested in public interest cases technically, financially, and intellectually.
During the unveiling, a member of PILIWA and Executive Director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Barrister Chima Williams, said public interest lawyering is a special area for legal practitioners, who have a passion for the public good.
Williams explained that the PILIWA was particularly interested in Nigerian lawyers, because of the peculiarity of the environmental and human rights abuses perpetrated by big corporations aided by the state in all parts of the country where natural resources abound.
On the Nigeria launch of the PILIWA initiative, the ERA/FoEN boss said a desk office will be set up in Benin City, which will receive an endowment to the tune of N250, 000, adding that the initiative will equally train young lawyers and equip them with the relevant knowledge on sources of evidence, how to gather evidence and how to present it before a court of competent jurisdiction.
In his intervention, Jonathan Kaufman, Executive Director of the Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) said that he owes his association’s legal work and particularly public interest cases with his experience as a young lawyer when he was conscripted into the cases filed by families associated with the late Ken Saro Wiwa case, as well as victims of the Parabe Oil Platform case caused by Chevron in Ondo State.
The two cases, Kaufman pointed out, encouraged him to reach out to and start associating with local lawyers that are classified as stubborn because of their quest for justice.
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He revealed that many legal cases suffer because of information-gathering deficits, financial constraints, and lack of thoroughness in terms of minute details. Sometimes lawyers are not able to obtain cross-border information that their peers may be able to obtain and pass on to them if a platform for cooperation exists.
He said the PILIWA platform will bridge the identified gaps to help public interest lawyers secure what they need to push and win unconventional cases.
The highpoint of the event was the inauguration of zonal coordinators for PILIWA in Nigeria. The nominated coordinators of the South-South, South East and North Central zones are Courage Nsirimovu, Kalu Emmanuel Chisom and Redzie D. Jugo, while the coordinators for the North West, North East and South West will be announced later.
Participants were drawn from the legal profession in Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Plateau, Imo, Enugu, Niger and Kogi states, among others.
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