As Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, begins her term as the 33rd president of the Nigerian Bar Association, a senior figure in the association’s Medicine & Law Committee has called on her to elevate medical and health law within the Bar’s public-interest work. The appeal, contained in a congratulatory message, highlights the growing need for stronger legal responses to patients’ rights, medical negligence, professional accountability and access to healthcare.
Joyce N. Eseni, Esq., second vice chair of the NBA Section on Legal Practice’s Medicine & Law Committee, urged Badejo-Okusanya to use her presidency to strengthen the legal profession’s engagement with difficult healthcare disputes. Eseni framed the issue as more than a niche specialisation, noting that lawyers are increasingly required to address questions of informed consent, confidentiality, negligence claims, professional discipline and the regulation of emerging medical technologies.
The message followed Badejo-Okusanya’s formal assumption of office in Port Harcourt. She is the first woman to win the NBA presidency through a direct election and only the second woman to lead the association, after Dame Priscilla Kuye’s tenure in 1991–92.
At her inauguration, Badejo-Okusanya stated that she sought the office not merely to make history but to make a difference. She pledged to lead a Bar with “no victims and no vanquished” and listed members’ welfare, technology and institutional reform among her administration’s priorities.
Nigeria’s healthcare system regularly generates legal issues ranging from patient safety and hospital accountability to the affordability of care and the standards expected of private providers. Medical law, however, often remains a specialised area that gains prominence only after serious injury or court proceedings. Eseni’s intervention advocates a more proactive stance: expanded continuing legal education on medical negligence and patients’ rights, closer collaboration between the NBA and medical professional bodies, and sustained advocacy on the laws and regulations governing healthcare delivery.
The proposed focus extends beyond negligence claims to broader questions of access and enforceability. For many patients, the practical ability to assert a right can matter as much as the formal existence of that right.
The call adds health law and patients’ rights to the set of issues the new NBA leadership will need to weigh as it shapes its public agenda. How the association responds will help determine the legal profession’s role when shortcomings in the health system become matters of rights, accountability and justice.
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