DISCIPLINE OF NOTARYS PUBLIC FOR ETHICAL VIOLATIONS AND NBA’s PURSUIT OF A CHIMERA

Abstract

The office of the notary public is of great antiquity, and is recognized in all civilized countries. By the law of nations, the acts of the public notary have credit everywhere. Contemporary occurrences in Nigeria’s jurisprudence compels a study to develop and set out the legal theory pertaining to aspects of the office of the notary. This paper examined the authority, power and competence of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) to sanction and discipline an erring notary public. The paper defined and classified the office of the public notary into its several divisions, and set out the appointing authority for each division of the office. From this classification, we established that the Chief Justice of the Federation is the appointing authority of the general notary public, and the appointment is made from members of the Bar in good standing. Thereafter, we set out the different permutations the discipline of the notary could take, and established from these that invariably, the ultimate authority to sanction and discipline an erring notary lies in the appointor. The foregoing led to our conclusion that while the NBA is competent to invoke statutory provisions to discipline a legal practitioner, who though is a notary, is guilty of professional misconduct, the scope of the discipline is limited to his status as a legal practitioner. In this regard, the NBA lacks statutory competence and authority to discipline a notary by either removing or suspending him from office.