Abuja - The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Justice Danladi Umar, on Wednesday threatened to sanction a lawyer, Mr Johnson Ugwuanyi if he appeared ``shabbily'' dressed before him again.
Justice Umar called out Ugwuanyi from his seat, when a prosecuting counsel, Simon Egede, drew the attention of the judge to how the defence counsel was dressed to court.
Egede said that Ugwuanyi's dressing was against the ethics of the law profession, because in spite of the fact that he wore a suit, he did not put on a tie.
``My lord, my learned counsel is not properly dressed to appear before you and his dressing is clearly in breach of the ethics of the law profession,’’ Egede said.
After taking a look at Ugwuanyi, Justice Umar expressed his disappointment at the way the lawyer was dressed.
Umar asked Ugwuanyi to leave his seat and approach the bench for proper assessment of his dressing.
The chairman declared him (Ugwuanyi) as ``unfit'' to appear before the tribunal like that.
``Counsel, you are improperly dressed to appear before this tribunal, we cannot tolerate this; the next time you appear like this, you will be sanctioned,’’ Umar said.
Ugwuanyi, who apologised, said: ``I am sorry, My lord, I did not mean to appear like this. I do not usually come to court dressed this way, it is just that I rushed from another court to appeared before you. I forgot one or two things.’’
NAN reports that Ugwuanyi is the defence counsel in a case filed against ex-councillor in Kogi, Musa Mubeen.
He is being charged for alleged non-declaration of assets while in office.
Musa is alleged to have received asset declaration forms from the Code of Conduct Bureau but failed to declare and submit it.
The case has been adjourned to March 6 for continuation of hearing.
NAN
