By Secrets Reporters
When a federal agency needs outside legal representation, it does not simply hire a lawyer. It must first obtain the approval of the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation.
Establishment Circular SGF/PS/CIR/625/1 of 16 July 2003 sets this out plainly. The requirement exists for two reasons. First, the Attorney-General is the government’s chief legal officer, and any litigation involving a federal body is ultimately the government’s litigation. Second, central approval protects the public purse, it prevents agencies from engaging unqualified lawyers at excessive fees on an ad hoc basis, with no one checking the standard or the cost.
The National Board for Arabic and Islamic Studies (NBAIS), Kaduna, paid ₦3,950,000.00 to three solicitors between 2018 and 2019. No approval from the Minister of Justice or the Attorney-General was on record.
The examined document flags two: engagement of inexperienced or unqualified solicitors, and loss of government funds through excessive fees. Both flow directly from the missing approval. The Attorney-General’s sign-off is the check that confirms a solicitor is competent to represent a federal agency and that the fees charged are reasonable. Without it, the Board had no external validation of either. It chose the lawyers, it negotiated the fees, and it paid all without the scrutiny the circular requires precisely for that situation.
NBAIS management did not deny engaging the solicitors or making the payments. Its response was this: “The Board was confronted with a lot of court cases and issues of which the legal department was not strong enough to defend the Board. Due to the urgency of the issues, the Board had to temporarily appoint external solicitors for the defence.”
The explanation is candid: the Board’s in-house legal department could not cope, the matters were urgent, and outside counsel was brought in. That may well describe a genuine operational problem. But it does not address the regulatory one. Urgency is not one of the grounds on which the approval requirement can be waived, and the circular does not provide an exception for agencies whose legal departments are stretched. If it did, the approval requirement would mean very little, since the agencies most likely to need outside counsel are those least equipped to manage litigation in-house.
There is also a timing point. The payments span 2018 to 2019 more than a year, across three separate solicitors. That is not a single emergency engagement made under pressure. It is a pattern of engagements, each of which would have required approval, and none of which appears to have received it.
The finding directs that the ₦3,950,000.00 be justified and recovered. No justification has been recorded that satisfies the circular. The Board’s explanation addresses its motives, not its compliance and the two are not the same
