BY SUNDAY SAMUEL The Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) has directed prominent lawyer Mike Ozekhome to stop using the title of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) pending the conclusion of disciplinary proceedings against him.
The decision was made in line with Paragraph 26(6) of the guidelines governing the award and regulation of the SAN rank. The measure will remain in force until the committee reaches a final decision on matters currently before its Disciplinary and Ethics Sub-Committee, as well as other related proceedings.
According to the LPPC, the action is intended to protect the honour, reputation and standing of the prestigious SAN designation while the issues under consideration are thoroughly examined.
As a result, Ozekhome is prohibited from portraying or identifying himself as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria until the disciplinary process is concluded.
The committee reaffirmed its dedication to promoting professionalism, ethical conduct and accountability within the legal profession, stressing the need to preserve public trust in the SAN institution.
Ozekhome was elevated to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 2010, joining a group of 19 distinguished legal practitioners admitted to the Inner Bar that year.
Dutch Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma visited Washington this week to meet with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and members of Congress to oppose the MATCH Act, a bill that would bar Chinese chipmakers from accessing Western semiconductor equipment, and one that would hit ASML especially hard.
ASML, based in the Netherlands, is Europe’s most valuable company and the only maker in the world of the sophisticated lithography machines that are used to make cutting-edge AI chips.
“It’s exceptional that I’m coming here to broadly outline our concerns to Congress,” Sjoerdsma told Bloomberg after the meetings. “The stakes for the Netherlands may be very high.”
China accounts for 19% of ASML’s net system sales. The MATCH Act would go further than existing controls, extending curbs to ASML’s deep ultraviolet immersion machines on top of the long-standing ban on its most advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, tools reaching China.
As ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told TechCrunch in May, what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools — gear first shipped about a decade ago — the same machines the MATCH Act would now relegate off limits.
The bill, introduced in April, hasn’t yet faced a full House or Senate vote; Bloomberg notes it would likely need to be folded into a larger package to pass.