A CONFLICT BETWEEN LEGAL PRACTITIONERS’ RULES ON CONFIDENTIALITY AND THE EFCC ACT?

When information is given to a person under express or implied confidentiality, the person must respect the confidence. In other words, when a person undertakes to keep secrets, he imposes upon himself a moral duty of confidentiality and shall therefore not breach the confidence. He must not share such secret or confidential information with other people. This simple moral precept must have formed the basis of the rules guiding the relationship between a lawyer and his client which impose on the lawyer a legal (as opposed to moral) duty of confidentiality in this regard. However, some legal practitioners have expressed their apprehension at various fora that there is a conflict between the discharge of this legal duty of confidentiality and some provisions of EFCC Act, thereby placing the lawyer between the proverbial ‘devil and the deep blue sea’. Others are of the view that there is no conflict between the two laws.