Author: Lawbreed Limited

For the first time, English and Welsh solicitors and law firms will be able to register to practise in India on a permanent basis, under new rules published by the Bar Council of India in March 2023. This historic development follows decades of campaigning by the Law Society of England and Wales, most recently through a visit to India by president Lubna Shuja and our international team last week to discuss these matters with the Bar Council of India and the Ministry of Law and Justice. Law Society president Lubna Shuja said: “The Bar Council of India’s decision is a…

President Muhammadu Buhari has signed 16 constitutional amendment bills into law. Among the bills is the one which mandates the President-elect and governors-elect to submit the names of ministers or commissioners to the Senate and State House of Assembly within 60 days of taking the oath of office. The bills signed into law include financial independence for state houses of assemblies and state judiciary; bills seeking to remove railway, prison, electricity from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list, among others. The assented bills will soon be published in the Official Gazette of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Your…

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released a chatbot called ChatGPT. To demonstrate the chatbot’s remarkable sophistication and potential implications, for both legal services and society more generally, most of this paper was generated in about an hour through prompts within ChatGPT. Only this abstract, the preface, the outline headers, the epilogue, and the prompts were written by a person. ChatGPT generated the rest of the text with no human editing. To be clear, the responses generated by ChatGPT were imperfect and at times problematic, and the use of an AI tool for law-related services raises a host of regulatory and…

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission on Friday lauded the robust and detailed decision of the coroner in the case of the Inquest into the death of Peju Ugboma who underwent a procedure at Premier Medical Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos. The PUNCH had reported that Ugboma died after she suffered internal bleeding following an elective hysterectomy operation for a fibroid condition in April 2021. The FCCPC opened an investigation upon the death of Mrs. Ugboma with the expectation that consumer protection issues associated with the duty and standard of care will be addressed. However, the full extent of that investigation only…

The Court of appeal has released the latest posting of justices for the year 2023. The new list signed by the President of the Court, Hon. Justice Dongban Mensem is to take immediate effect and Hon. Justices are expected to be at their new stations by the 14th March, 2023. See and Download the full list below:

The Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has revoked the work permit, visa, and residence permit of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Seplat Energy PLC, Mr. Roger Brown, over allegations of racism, preference of foreign workers and discriminating against Nigerian employees levelled against him by workers of the company. The Federal Government equally accused Mr. Brown of being in possession of a Combined Expatriate Residence Permit and Aliens Card (CERPAC) not based on a valid Expatriate Quota. It was also alleged that Mr Brown failed to honour invitations by the Ministry’s panel, which investigated the matter. The revocation was…

On the 23rd day of January 2023, the High Court of Lagos State delivered judgment in a suit filed by Olumide Babalola against a digital lending Company – Soko Lending Company for infringement of the right to privacy and breach of the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation. In Suit No. LD/13031MFHR/2022, privacy lawyer claimed: 1. A DECLARATION that by virtue of article 2.2 of the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation 2019, the Respondent lacks lawful basis to process (collect, store and/or use) the Applicant’s personal data (especially his name and telephone number) to send the Applicant unsolicited and offensive Whatsapp messages and…

In the face of outcry over rising transaction costs of financial services, deposit money banks (DMBs) have extended electronic money transfer levy (EMTL) to domiciliary accounts. The new levy takes immediate effect according to communication messages sighted by The Guardian. The levy, which is completed by banks on behalf of the government, was previously restricted to naira accounts. But banks have communicated to their customers that the fee would, with immediate effect, apply to domiciliary accounts on the directive of the Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed. Accordingly, a dollar or pound account holder would henceforth pay…

The operational guidelines outline the procedures that govern how banks and other financial institutions are permitted to access and manage customer data. The Central Bank of Nigeria Wednesday issued operational guidelines for open banking in Nigeria. The operational guidelines outline the procedures that govern how banks and other financial institutions are permitted to access and manage customer data. Open banking is a financial services concept that allows third-party financial service providers to access banking data, typically through application programming interfaces (APIs), with the explicit consent of the customers. It basically allows customers to share their banking data with other financial…

The Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Wednesday, gave the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the nod to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, it used for the presidential election. The court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of justices, held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect Saturday’s governorship and state assemblies elections. It dismissed objections that the Labour Party, LP, and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, raised against INEC’s move to reconfigure all the BVAS. According to the court, allowing the…