WHEN THE WIG IS FOR SALE
What VDM Should Have Told the NBA About Our Lords, Our Silks, and Our Silence
By Charles Ude, Esq.
Legal Practitioner and Attorney
Port Harcourt, 28 August 2026
The 66th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association will be remembered for one panel, “Known Gunmen or Unknown Gunmen,” and one man who was never supposed to be there: Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM).
He told a hall of 15,000 lawyers, “I am not here to teach you law.” Then he cited the judge abducted on 26 July in Kebbi after travelling from Sokoto, and alleged that some checkpoint officers profile wealthy travellers and tip off kidnappers. The Police asked him to bring evidence.
The Bar erupted. Chief Femi Falana, SAN, said NBA conferences are “not circus shows.” Others dismissed VDM as a misfit, deeply disappointing.
With profound respect to Chief Falana, that view is the very disease VDM came to diagnose. The circus is not that VDM was invited. The circus is that after everything we know, we still pretend we do not know.
VDM was too kind. If you invite a man whose entire brand is calling out filth, do not then ask him to discuss insecurity in abstract. He should have dragged the elephant into the room and put a leash on it. The elephant is judicial and professional corruption. And it is the topic lawyers are most terrified to touch.
The Things We Whisper in Chambers But Will Not Say on Microphone
Every young lawyer in Nigeria knows the price list, even if he has never paid it. We joke about it in the car park, we idiomize it , “the fatness of the envelope,” “see the judge,” “sort the registry” , but we develop laryngitis once a camera is on.
VDM should have shamed us with what is already public record:
- My Lords as Defendants: In October 2016, the DSS raided the homes of serving Justices in what the country called the “sting operation.” Supreme Court Justices were arrested over allegations of staggering cash recoveries. Some were acquitted, some had charges withdrawn, but the image never left us: Justices counted like Yahoo boys.
- The Judge Who Could Not Explain Her Wealth: A Justice was arraigned by the EFCC for allegedly laundering millions of dollars and owning properties her salary could not dream of.
- The Senior Advocate Who Bought Justice: A SAN was convicted for attempting to pervert the course of justice , exchanging text messages with registrars, sending money, buying favour. A silk stripped of his rank.
- The Ghost Judgments: Prof. Chidi Odinkalu said it this week: “some judges even deliver judgments not written by them.” In one election petition matter, a tribunal judgment contained watermarks pointing to a law firm.
- The Clients Who Own Their Lawyers: How many Senior Advocates today are nothing but errand boys for politicians? Filing frivolous ex parte motions at 4:55 pm, securing orders at 6:00 pm, then appearing on television by Monday to defend “rule of law.”
These are not rumours from motor parks. These are charges filed, convictions secured, scandals where judges themselves were defendants.
If VDM wanted to talk about “unknown gunmen,” he should have told the NBA that the most dangerous unknown gunmen wear wigs and write enrolment numbers.
The Factory of Fear — And the Uniform That Trains It
Why will a lawyer who can abuse his opponent’s mother in open court suddenly stammer when asked about a corrupt judge? Because we have built a factory that produces fear, and we call it legal education.
From university, you are taught that the lecturer is infallible. You cram, you do not interrogate. In Law School, you learn how to bow, how to say “My Lord” from your belly, how to hold your wig as if it were the crown of England. Procedure over justice. Form over substance.
And even before the wig, the system begins with the uniform. Undergraduate and law school students are forced into identical attire, as if legal education were a military parade. Instead of cultivating consciousness, intellectual courage, and independent thought, we train them to dress alike, bow alike, and think alike.
The result is predictable: by the time a student becomes a lawyer, he has already learned that appearance matters more than argument, obedience more than originality. The wig is not the beginning of silence; the uniform is.
My Disagreement With Falana: Dignity Without Honesty Is Cosmetics
Chief Femi Falana, SAN, is a hero. But on this point, he is wrong. To call this conference a circus because it invited VDM is to protect dignity at the expense of truth.
VDM was not the circus. VDM was the town crier who shouted that the king is naked. You do not chase the town crier. You give him a chair.
The Wig and the Plate: When Lawyers Fight for Food
And if anyone doubted that the rot is not only in our courts but also in our culture, the conference itself provided the evidence. Learned colleagues, men and women in silk, in wig, in gown, were filmed scrambling, shoving, even trading blows over plates of food.
Not once. Not twice. But as has now become a perennial ritual at NBA conferences.
The optics are devastating: the viral clips are not of debates on constitutionalism, but of silks fighting for suya.
This is not hunger. This is habit. And it is the same habit that makes us scramble for briefs from politicians, scramble for favours from judges, scramble for envelopes from clients. The food fight is not an isolated shame; it is a metaphor for the Bar itself.
What VDM Should Do Next, And What We Must Do
VDM should carry his camera not only to checkpoints, but to registries where filing fees disappear, to courts where judgments are ready before addresses are adopted, to chambers where clerks collect envelopes.
And we, the Bar, must stop pretending that “a few bad eggs” are the problem when the whole poultry is smelling. Professionalism is not silence. Professionalism is courage in a wig.
If we do not, then let us be honest and change our motto. Not “Promoting the Rule of Law,” but “Promoting the Rule of Survival.”
Closing
VDM held up the mirror in Port Harcourt. He saw a Bar that is educated, eloquent, and scared stiff.
It is time to break the mirror. And break the fear.
Charles Ude, Esq.
Legal Practitioner and Author
Charlesude2014@gmail.com
