By Janet Bassey (Governance Reporter)
Apparently expressing her profound disappointment and hopelessness about the possibility of Nigeria ever achieving redemption as a nation and ensuring good moral examples and future for her youths, self-proclaimed 'baddest lawyer', Barrister Ifunnanya Excel Grant, has justified her alleged condemnable weird public conduct, saying that the Wednesday, March 1, 2023 declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as elected president of Nigeria by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was an indication that she owes the nation no obligation of any kind to exhibit an acceptable high moral behavior.
The young attorney who is currently having an altercation with her professional body, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) on account of her alleged unwholesome moral conduct in the public space, said in a reposte while answering a question from her social media interrogator on whether she “studied law just to frustrate the law,” that: “If INEC fit declare Tinubu president, why not?”!
The import of the young lady's response were that probably INEC failed simple ethical test; that the Commission flagrantly compromised national trust and public morality and disappointed the youths of the country like her, by prematurely declaring a winner in a most controversial circumstance of that Presidential election since the history of poll result announcements in Nigeria.
Grant was also pointing out that the associated moral questions surrounding the announcement of that result, the candidate so upheld as winner of the presidential poll and the conduct of the 2023 general elections itself, which were the core issues in the petitions before the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) in Abuja, do not provide the requisite moral plank for a Nigerian youth like her to conform to acceptable moral standard of public and private behavior.
In recent times, the non-conformist lady lawyer, Ifunnanya Grant, has acquired notoriety for always flooding her social media handles with pictures and videos of her half naked body and images of her smoking marijuana, popularly known as Igbo!
In a defiant post on Facebook which indicated that she was not fazed by the petition, the controversial lawyer wrote: “Before I can light up my Igbo (Indian hemp), do you have any advice for Me? Note: Tell those people wey dey find me say I’m unavailable.”
In a flurry of exchanges with her followers on Twitter who commented on the NBA petition, Ifunanya berated a fan who suggested that the petition will lead to her trial and imprisonment, saying “abégi shift.”
When one Omachi Isaac Achor warned her that “NBA is after you; very soon they go jail you,” she responded: “Then prepare to join me.”
The said “baddest” girl in the Nigeria legal profession, however, dared her professional umbrella body, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to do its worst, boasting that she will put the association to shame in a court room contest, especially in respect of her behavior. Her apparent unconventional indulgence on the social medial had attracted the attention of the NBA. In a statement made available at the weekend, NBA said: “Following the resolutions of the National Officers, the NBA has filed petitions at the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) against Ifunanya Excel Grant, a young lawyer of Aba Branch widely known as “the baddest lawyer on social media.”
NBA said the complaints against Miss Ifunanya centred on her social media notoriety of posting pictures and videos of herself unclad and smoking marijuana. But reacting to NBA’s move on Sunday, a defiant Ifunanya not only shrugged off the petition but boasted that she will floor the almighty NBA.
Using the allegory of the biblical David and Goliath, and apparently likening herself to David, she asked a commentator on the social media who reminded her of the pending petition to “tell them say David killed Goliath.”
In an earlier post in response to the NBA petition, the lawyer-turned-social media sensation cryptically wrote: “Them go feel it.” She illustrated her statement with a sweating emoji, indicating that she would make the lawyers’ association sweat.
While most lawyers who weighed in on the trending report chided her for allegedly bringing the profession to disrepute, a handful of lawyers however argued that the petition was misconceived, saying the embattled lawyer is not engaged in legal practice. (additional reports from TheNiche.com). NNL.
