VDM At The NBA Conference? Be Serious

I genuinely don’t understand why questioning VDM’s invitation to the NBA Annual General Conference means we are saying he has contributed nothing to Nigeria.

That’s not the argument.

VDM has done things worth acknowledging. He has brought attention to cases ordinary Nigerians may never have been able to get attention for. He has challenged institutions and used his platform to force conversations that might otherwise have been ignored.

Good.

But why does that make him an appropriate speaker at an NBA conference on insecurity?

People spend five years studying law. They go through the stress of Nigerian Law School. They write Bar exams. They struggle to qualify. They spend years building actual expertise in law, policy, advocacy and the institutions they’re dealing with.

And after all that, they attend the NBA’s biggest professional gathering expecting intellectual and professional engagement.

Then you invite someone whose public career is largely built around having a take on virtually every controversy on social media.

Someone whose brand has also included controversies around defamation and cyberbullying, public confrontations, the infamous Hypo episode and leaked private videos.

And we’re supposed to pretend that asking “Why him?” is elitist?

No.

If VDM wants to talk about social-media activism, citizen advocacy, grassroots mobilisation or his experience bringing cases to public attention, by all means.

Those are areas where he actually has experience.

If he wants to talk about being a first responder to cases he encounters, let him speak at a conference where that experience is relevant, not because he is a doctor, but because that is the kind of personal experience he can meaningfully discuss.

But insecurity is a complex legal, institutional and policy issue.

Nigeria has lawyers, academics, judges, researchers, security experts and policymakers who have spent years studying it.

So what exactly is VDM bringing to that conversation?

And if VDM wants to occupy the NBA’s intellectual space as an authority, then perhaps he should first go through the same intellectual and professional process that the people in that room have gone through:

Get a degree. Study the law. Go through Nigerian Law School. Build actual professional expertise.

Because nobody is saying he isn’t allowed to have an opinion.

He can have as many opinions as he likes.

But having an opinion on everything happening on social media does not automatically make you an intellectual authority on everything.

Popularity is not expertise.
Activism is not scholarship.
Having a platform is not a professional qualification.

And this isn’t even about whether VDM is intelligent.

He may be.

It’s about whether he is the right person for this particular platform.

Lawyers, academics, judges, researchers, and policy experts have spent years studying these issues.

There are law students and young lawyers who have sacrificed years of their lives to acquire the very professional knowledge this conference is supposed to develop.

So yes, they are entitled to ask:

“What exactly am I here to learn from VDM?”

You can acknowledge everything good he has done and still believe that the NBA got this particular choice wrong.

Because not every influential Nigerian belongs on every professional platform.

If the NBA wants intellectual discourse, then let intellectual and professional expertise be the standard, not social-media popularity.

Because at this point, they could invite Peller next.

Opinion article written by: Ehis Okoebor, Esq, Acis