HOME TRUTHS FOR NEW WIGS III

If there is any counsel anywhere whose cockles are warmed when referred to or identified as a barrister, he must be a new wig. How new wigs like to show off that they are now members of the bar!

THE bar, mind you, not that other universal bar which comes in different shapes and sizes but where libations may or may not precede imbibation, which may proceed to intoxication, exceeding not unusually to stupefaction.

I think it not untoward for a counsel duly called to the bar to wish to be known as a gentleman. People, it is no joke, at least in Nigeria, to legitimately attain the double barreled status of “barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.”

For me, many years after leaving the university, I still remember my ordeals so to say under intellectual task masters such as Yemi “Res gestae” Osinbajo, Benedicta “Master Your Torts” Susu, “One-point-zero” Smith, Mike “Constitutional Terror” Ikhariale, Baba, “Jurrrysprudenze” Daramola there and even greater ‘Horrors’ at the school of all schools, the Nigerian Law School.

But it is one thing to say you are one thing, it is another to look it. If you take a spoonful of the contents of a bottle labeled ‘Honey’ and only then realize you’ve lubricated your innards with vinegar, it is doubtful you’ll break into a smile; grimace, more like it.

It is, perhaps an imperfect analogy, but that’s how one may liken the dressing of many new wigs which hardly matches the expected level of true and proper counsel.

The public perception and expectation (a reasonable one for that matter) of a legal practitioner in terms of dressing and comportment is that he should always look decent, respectable and attractive.

Unfortunately, many new wigs are sloppy, indifferent and distasteful dressers.

Uncountable numbers of them have lost employment opportunities due wholly or in part, to poor dressing. What reasonable principal would consider taking on a new wig who comes for interview wearing an unironed shirt and a perishing jacket?

There was an occasion a new wig seriously in search of a job came to me wearing a stressed out buba and sokoto with a “tekowi” looking type of sandal! Since I could not imagine an Agbekoya in my chambers, I was neither slow nor polite in chasing away the disgrace from my presence.

When you meet many new wigs in the court premises these days, especially in the afternoons, they are often without any “chest ornamentation” in the form of a tie or a bib. The quick excuses are: “Sir, it’s so hot” and “I have just left the court room.”

But as we have said earlier, these are just excuses to justify a not so respectable appearance. Come rain, come shine, a gentleman except in dire, emergency situations and circumstances, will always look decent and respectable.

It baffles me when new wigs complain that they are not given due respect by older colleagues, judges, judiciary staff and even litigants. Is it because I’m young?’ they fume.

They seem to forget that already they are at a disadvantage ab-initio by being mere youths in a patriarchal, gerontocratic society and novice entrants into a conservative profession that practices seniority. To now indulge in a dressing mode that demonstrates and even emphasizes the “I-don-care” casualness, if not libertine, control-resisting impulses and tendencies of youth now puts them in the tragic shoes of the proverbial man marked down for roasting who goes ahead to give himself an oil wash.

Who will give respect to a young lawyer who looks like a failed or failing salesman? Who will yield honour to a new wig who can be mistaken for a secondary school drop-out or a medicine peddler? I think I should put in an extra word for new wigs who are ladies, as some of them not only dress poorly but wrongly.

Any lady who is called to the Nigerian Bar cannot embrace the Book of Revelation and the Scriptures of exposure and strut about as a sex-bomb and expect to be considered and treated any better than a hooker on the loose.

Of course, dressing the part of a lawyer does not need to be expensive. There are so many places including ‘bend down boutiques’ where a man may go and ‘select’ and go home with neat and decent wears.

Is somebody scoffing there? Verily I say unto you: better to patronize Aswani market for wears on Saturday and look okay on Monday than to look vulture-shabby and blame your pathetic appearance on your lean pockets!

The basic rules governing good dressing are as follows:

1. Accept these two colours: black and white as major colours you have to live with, all the days of your professional life. Two other colours you should also embrace are navy-blue and grey. The reason is that these are sober colours, acceptable in the profession, for most occasions.

A legal practitioner is in a sober and conservative profession and as such it is not expected especially in court to turn up in bright and loud colours.

This means it is a “crime” to come to court in shoes and wears coloured orange, red, gold, brown, green, etc. These are the colours of modern day tele-evangelists, actors, musicians and such others.

2. Be well groomed. Take care of your hair cuts and hair dos. Stay away from the weird and the fantastic. You are not a thespian? Avoid sloppy “finishing” like unshaved cheeks, unpolished shoes, ‘fling-y’ shoe laces, unpruned nails, large and loud ornaments, scruffy bags, tousled hair, scrappy belts.

3. Wear clean clothes. Your wears need not be expensive. In fact they can be the cheapest anywhere but you must wear them neat. Your suits must be neat; your ties and bibs neat and unstained.

Your shoes must not be crying for salvation or yelling for attention. And if you have a car, it must not look like a mobile mad-house or an ambulatory dung-heap! Your car is an extension of your appearance.
TO BE CONTINUED.