Legal scholar and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, has criticised the newly announced application fees for the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), cautioning that the cost may push the prestigious title beyond the reach of ordinary, honest practitioners.
In a post shared Monday on his X handle, @ChidiOdinkalu, the public interest advocate revealed that prospective SAN applicants in private practice are now required to pay a non-refundable ₦5 million, while those in government service will pay ₦2.5 million.
“Ok, so the next round of applications to become SAN in Nigeria will cost practitioners ₦5m non-refundable. Public servants interested will cough up ₦2.5m.
Please, how do they expect an honest public servant to find this? Very soon they will price SAN into extinction,” Odinkalu wrote.
His reaction followed the circulation of a document attributed to the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC), dated November 3, 2025, calling for applications for the 2026 conferment exercise. The circular, which began making the rounds yesterday, has raised concerns among lawyers about how it leaked and whether it is authentic.
According to the document, applications are to be submitted online through www.lppconline.com, with the portal scheduled to open on November 1, 2025. The LPPC also listed two bank accounts belonging to Zenith Bank and GTBank for the specified payments.
The circular further outlined a lengthy list of documentation requirements, including uploading materials online and submitting five flash drives containing all supporting files to the LPPC Secretariat at the Supreme Court Complex.
Odinkalu’s concerns echo wider sentiments within the legal community about the affordability and accessibility of the SAN rank regarded as the highest honour for legal practitioners in Nigeria.
Critics argue that the steadily increasing cost of the SAN application process risks turning the rank into an exclusive preserve of wealthy practitioners, thereby undermining merit and the public-service values of the legal profession. They also note that only one academic applicant is usually selected each year, despite university professors earning an average salary of about ₦400,000 monthly, making the ₦5 million fee particularly burdensome for academics.
Efforts by NewsNGR to obtain clarification from the Supreme Court were unsuccessful, as a spokesperson stated that the matter does not fall within the Court’s purview and that the circular did not originate from them. The spokesperson directed all inquiries to Kabir Eniola Akanbi, Esq., Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court and Secretary of the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee. However, multiple calls to his phone were not answered as of the time of filing this report.
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