Laws in Nigeria are against the poor – Legal Aid Council

Legal Aid Council (LAC) has attributed the inability of Nigerians to access justice in the country to poverty, lack of access to information and the inherent bias of law against the marginalised people.

The Director General of the LAC, Mrs Joy Bob-Manuel, said the  Council had been struggling to cope with its  mandate of providing free and quality legal services to the less privileged, whose rights were being violated, due to inadequate staff strength.

Bob-Manuel, speaking at a Round-table  on ‘Enhanced Access to Legal Aid for Pretrial Detainees’ through public/private sector partnership, in Abuja, disclosed that with only four lawyers per state, it was inadequate for them to defend all indigent persons in Nigeria.