A group of  legal practitioners, the Public Interest Lawyers League, has called on the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Afam Osigwe and the Chairman, NBA Annual General Conference Organising Committee, Emeka Obegolu to resign over the controversy trailing the N300m paid by the Rivers State Government to the association to host the event.

There have been calls on the Osigwe-led NBA to refund the money allegedly paid to its coffers by the suspended Governor of Rivers State, Mr Siminalayi Fubara.

The association which has since moved the annual conference to Enugu however insisted that the N300m was a gift from the Rivers State Government.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday in Abuja, the President, Public Interest Lawyers League, Abdul Mahmud urged the NBA leadership to save the image of the association by refunding the money without further delay.

According to Mahmud, NBA cannot claim to be a watchdog of public morality while engaging in conduct so thoroughly devoid of the very standards it seeks to impose on others.

He stressed that the insistence of the leadership of the NBA to hold on to the N300m is not only disgraceful but speaks to the organisational rot that has enabled the unaccountable elite class within the NBA to hold out