Sixty-eight lawyers take silk on Monday. The rank is fifty-one years old, its rules have tightened, and this year’s class says as much about how Nigeria’s profession is built as about who made the cut.
There is a moment at every conferment when the new silks file into the front row. In most Nigerian courtrooms that row is not a matter of etiquette. It is a legal privilege, written into rules made under the Legal Practitioners Act, and on Monday 12 October 2026 sixty-eight more lawyers become entitled to it.
The Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee approved the class at its 174th plenary on 23 July: 67 advocates and one academic. Several headlines at the time said 69. The articles beneath them, and the Committee’s own list, said 68.
What the rank actually is
Senior Advocate of Nigeria is the country’s successor to the Queen’s Counsel. Section 5 of the Legal Practitioners Act sets the floor: no one can be conferred without at least ten years’ standing at the Bar. The same section creates the Committee and lets it make rules on the privileges that come with the rank.
Those privileges are specific. Senior Advocates sit in the inner bar, or the front row where there is none. They may mention their matters out of turn on the cause list. In civil matters before a superior court of record, a Senior Advocate may not appear without a junior or another silk. The gown changes too: silk, not cotton.
Who decides
The Committee is chaired by the Chief Justice of Nigeria. Its members include the Attorney-General of the Federation, a Justice of the Supreme Court, the President of the Court of Appeal, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, five State Chief Judges and five Senior Advocates. The Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court serves as Secretary. Chief Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun chaired this year’s plenary.
The route to the front row is long. Applicants file online; advocates pass through two rounds of filtration, academics through pre-qualification; chambers are inspected, physically or virtually; a shortlist is published for public comment; finalists are interviewed; a plenary decides. Under the 2022 Guidelines, advocates must submit twenty trial-court judgments, five from the Court of Appeal and four from the Supreme Court. The non-refundable application fee is now N1 million, up from N300,000 in 2013.
Then comes a rule that surprises outsiders. Once named, designates must not publish, and must discourage others from publishing, congratulatory advertisements before conferment. The rule sits in paragraph 25(1) of the Guidelines and Rule 39(3) of the Rules of Professional Conduct. For three months each year, the most celebrated people in the profession are asked to stay quiet about it.
Fifty-one years of silk
The first two were conferred on 3 April 1975: Chief F.R.A. Williams and Dr Nabo Graham-Douglas. Chief Folake Solanke became the first woman in 1981.
Growth was slow for decades. Vanguard counted 344 Senior Advocates in July 2011. Federal High Court records cited by The Whistler put the figure at 693 after the 2021 swearing-in. Recent classes have been large: 62 in 2022, 58 in 2023, 87 in 2024 and 57 in 2025. On simple arithmetic, the rank now has roughly a thousand holders, conferred in the last half century. That is an estimate. There is no published running total.
| Year | Conferees | Advocates | Academics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 72 | 62 | 10 |
| 2022 | 62 | 53 | 9 |
| 2023 | 58 | n/d | n/d |
| 2024 | 87 | 86 | 1 |
| 2025 | 57 | 56 | 1 |
| 2026 | 68 | 67 | 1 |
The professor problem
The most striking line in that table is the last column. In 2020 ten academics took silk. In 2022, nine. Since the 2022 Guidelines, the Committee confers the rank on only the best academic applicant in each exercise. This year twelve professors were shortlisted. One was chosen: Professor Nnamdi Onyeka Obiaraeri, professor of law and former Dean of the Faculty of Law at Imo State University, Owerri.
The policy is deliberate. Its effect is that the academic route to silk, once a steady stream, is now a single seat.
The funnel
The Committee shortlisted 89 candidates on 24 June: 77 advocates and 12 academics. Sixty-seven advocates made the final list, a conversion rate of about 87 per cent. Shortlists have been shrinking: 129 in 2022, 98 in 2024, 89 this year. The hard sorting now happens earlier, in filtration and inspection, before names are ever published.
The petition that did not stop the list
The year’s most consequential objection came from a former Senate President. On 25 May, Bukola Saraki petitioned the Chief Justice to block the elevation of Senior Sulyman Ibrahim, Kwara State’s Attorney-General since May 2022. Saraki’s complaint was about prosecutorial power: in April, the state had charged him, a former governor and others in connection with the 2018 Offa robbery, and he called the case politically motivated.
The Committee approved Ibrahim on 23 July. The episode is a reminder that the public-comment window is not a formality. It is also a reminder that the Committee weighs competence and integrity, not the politics of the cases an Attorney-General brings.
Silk in the commercial firms
Senior Advocates have traditionally come from litigation chambers. This class includes at least three litigation leads at full-service commercial firms.
Olujoke Aliu is Co-Managing Partner of Aluko & Oyebode, a role she has held since January 2023, and heads its Abuja office. In 2015 she became the firm’s first female litigation partner.
Soibi Ovia is a founding partner of Duale, Ovia & Alex-Adedipe and heads its litigation and dispute resolution practice. She was called to the Bar in 2007 and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK).
Chinedum Umeche became a partner in the litigation and arbitration practice of Banwo & Ighodalo in 2021, fourteen years after his call in 2007.
For clients this matters in a practical way. A transaction firm with a silk in the building can take a dispute from boardroom to Supreme Court without changing counsel.
Still a narrow door for women
Channels Television reported that four of the sixty-eight are women, about six per cent. Aliu and Ovia are two of them. Forty-five years after Folake Solanke, the arithmetic has barely moved.
Other names worth knowing
Akorede Habeeb Lawal, principal of A.H. Lawal & Co. and a former National Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association, was called in 2010, placing him among the more recent calls in the class. Alexander Muoka, managing partner of A. Muoka & Co. in Lagos and a former Chairman of NBA Lagos, is also on the list.
What to watch
- The academic cap. Whether one academic a year survives the next revision of the Guidelines.
- The women. Whether four in sixty-eight becomes a pressure point for the Committee or the Bar.
- Discipline. The 2022 Guidelines claim power to withdraw or suspend the rank. A ThisDay analysis in July argued that conflicts with the Legal Practitioners Act, which gives discipline to a separate committee. Expect that argument to reach a court.
- Who briefs whom. New silks at commercial firms change the economics of disputes for the firms’ own clients. Meridian will track their matters in the Transactions Tracker and the Lawyer Index.
The full 2026 list is in Meridian’s SAN 2026 strip on the homepage. Get the next Meridian Briefing, every Thursday at 11:00 AM.
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