Femi Falana
Senior Advocate of Nigeria and human rights lawyer Femi Falana has criticised the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) for inviting social media personality Martins Vincent Otse, popularly known as VeryDarkMan (VDM), to speak as a panelist at its ongoing 66th Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Falana made the remarks on Thursday, August 27, 2026, during an appearance on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily. He argued that the invitation undermined the intellectual standard traditionally associated with NBA conferences.
VDM had featured on Tuesday in a panel session titled “Known Gunmen or Unknown Gunmen,” where he shared his experiences covering insecurity in Nigeria and visiting communities affected by killings and attacks. His participation sparked mixed reactions among lawyers, with some questioning the suitability of a non-lawyer social media activist for the platform and others defending it as valuable public feedback.
“In those days, the NBA brought individuals who had paid their dues, who were coming to engage lawyers intellectually. We wanted to learn from them, and so none of our conferences was a circus show in the past,” Falana said.
He stressed that discussions on national security should feature people with demonstrable professional experience or contributions to the country’s security architecture, whether from the public or private sector.
“But when you bring people who have nothing to do with the security of the country, there are problems,” he added. Falana compared the move to inviting someone without relevant credentials to address media practitioners on press freedom: “You are going to bring practitioners in that field, either in academics or in the newsroom. But to just go and bring somebody from nowhere to come and entertain you, there are problems with that.”
His comments came amid broader debate over VDM’s role. Some senior lawyers, including Professor Chidi Odinkalu, had defended the invitation as an opportunity for the legal profession to hear from members of the public who engage with issues of justice and insecurity.
Falana rejected such defences for specialised topics like national security, insisting speakers must possess relevant expertise.
The NBA conference, themed around broader national and legal issues and running from August 21 to 28, has drawn lawyers and other figures for discussions on Nigeria’s challenges. VDM had earlier responded to critics of his invitation by stating he was there to share lived experiences of insecurity—not to teach law—and noted that even judges have been affected by abductions.
Falana’s critique adds to ongoing conversations about the criteria for selecting speakers at professional gatherings of the Nigerian legal community.
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