Who Can Appear as Counsel in Nigerian-Seated Arbitration?

In most arbitrations, the parties appoint their preferred lawyers, and the tribunal proceeds with the case. Nigerian-seated arbitrations have historically followed the same pattern.

What has prompted a closer look is the interaction between two legal texts that serve different purposes. The Arbitration and Mediation Act 2023 (AMA) reflects the orthodox arbitration position that parties may choose who represents or assists them in the proceedings. The Legal Practitioners Bill 2025, by contrast, is concerned with professional regulation and, if enacted in its current form, would broaden how the “practice of law” is defined, including by treating representation before an arbitrator as regulated legal work.

The Bill is not law, so nothing has formally changed. But representation choices in arbitration are rarely provisional. Decisions about who leads the case, who appears on the record, and how roles are described are typically made at the outset and carried through the reference. By the time a point is raised later, those choices are already reflected in the procedural file.

Against that background, the practical concern is not that tribunals will begin excluding foreign lawyers. It is that counsel participation may later be recast as a procedural issue, assessed by reference to the record rather than what the parties intended. When that occurs, it tends to surface as objections or case-management points, often when they offer tactical leverage. The focus, therefore, is on how representation is structured and described early—while choices remain open—so as to reduce avoidable friction later and protect downstream set-aside and enforcement options.

At its core, the issue is a boundary question. Arbitration law concerns the process: who a tribunal may hear from and how proceedings are conducted. Professional regulation concerns status: who may lawfully practise law and in what settings.

Most of the time, those two systems operate without friction. Arbitration is private and consensual; professional regulation is public and supervisory. But where representation before an arbitrator is treated, for regulatory purposes, as legal practice, the boundary becomes harder to ignore. The question is no longer only whether a tribunal is willing to hear a particular lawyer. It becomes whether that lawyer’s participation can be questioned in a way that affects procedure, timing, or the integrity of the record on which any resulting award will rest.

The Bill approaches arbitration indirectly. Its focus is the regulation of legal practice, and arbitration arises because the Bill, as currently drafted, defines the bodies before which regulated work may be carried out.

As drafted, the Bill defines an “adjudicative body” to include an arbitrator (clause 16(3)(a)). It then defines the “practice of law” to include representing a person before an adjudicative body (clause 16(5)(c)). Read together, those provisions create a textual link between legal representation and appearances before arbitral tribunals.

The Bill’s restrictive language reinforces that link. A person without a valid licence is prohibited from presenting themselves before a court, tribunal, or arbitrator as a legal practitioner (clause 28(4)(a)). The focus of that restriction is not the forum as such, but the capacity in which the person appears. On its face, the Bill does not distinguish between litigation and arbitration; it turns instead on whether the activity amounts to the practice of law as defined.

The Bill also sets out a framework for foreign legal practitioners. In outline, it contemplates licensing in respect of a specific cause or matter, and—where permission is granted—anticipates partnership or collaboration with a Nigerian-qualified legal practitioner (clauses 30(1) and 30(3)). Again, this is framed as professional regulation, not as a procedural rule governing arbitral proceedings.

Taken at face value, and if enacted in this form, these clauses create a plausible route for arguing that appearing before a Nigeria-seated arbitral tribunal as counsel falls within a regulated category of legal work. That is the source of the current attention.

What the Bill does not do is just as important. It does not explain how these provisions are meant to operate within an arbitral process, how tribunals should respond if the issue is raised, or how licensing would function in the middle of an ongoing arbitration. Those unanswered questions are where uncertainty sits—and why this is best approached as a planning issue rather than a settled rule.

The AMA remains central to the analysis. It adopts the orthodox arbitration position that each party may be represented or assisted by persons of its choosing, subject to notice to the tribunal and the other side. In practical terms, that allows parties in Nigerian-seated arbitrations to appoint the team they think is best placed to run the case, whether local, foreign, or a combination. 

That principle, however, is procedural. While the AMA governs the conduct of arbitration, it does not determine who may practise law in Nigeria, nor does it override professional regulation that seeks to do so. Party autonomy addresses the tribunal-facing question (who the parties have appointed), but it does not necessarily answer the regulatory question, if one is raised, about whether a particular form of “representation” requires licensing.

In the Nigerian context, that distinction is material because professional regulation is not merely a private concern between parties. If enacted in its current form, the Legal Practitioners Bill would form part of Nigerian public policy governing who may lawfully practise law before an adjudicative body. Party autonomy under the AMA would continue to govern arbitral procedure, but it would not insulate representation choices from scrutiny under that public-policy framework. Any such scrutiny would arise at the set-aside or enforcement stage, when the focus shifts to how the arbitration was conducted and what the record shows about who appeared and in what capacity.

If the Legal Practitioners Bill is enacted in its current form, questions about whether a party’s counsel participation complies with Nigerian professional regulation are likely to be approached by reference to the record. The Bill focuses on “representing” a party before an arbitrator. The Arbitration and Mediation Act allows parties to be “represented or assisted” by persons of their choosing. That difference in language can be relevant—but only if the way the arbitration is run makes the distinction intelligible to someone examining the file later.

Objections are most likely to arise where the arbitration is seated in Nigeria, there is a realistic prospect that hearings, interim applications, or enforcement will touch Nigeria, and foreign lawyers appear on the record without a clear regulatory footing. That risk profile is more pronounced in disputes involving public entities or MDAs, as compliance narratives are examined more closely and preserved with greater care.

In practice, attention needs to be paid to how participation is presented and recorded. How the notice of representation is framed. Whose names appear on pleadings. Who signs submissions. Who addresses the tribunal. How those roles are reflected in procedural orders and hearing transcripts. Taken together, those choices shape how participation is characterised.

That characterisation carries forward. Procedural orders, transcripts, and the award itself are the materials a court later reviews if enforcement or set-aside is contested. Once those documents reflect a particular allocation of roles, recasting them after the event is rarely straightforward.

If foreign counsel is intended to assist rather than represent, that needs to be reflected consistently in how the case is run and recorded. If foreign counsel is expected to perform representative acts, then licensing and collaboration under the Bill should be treated as a live structural question from the outset. Either way, the objective is to avoid ambiguity. Clear role design early on reduces the scope for procedural friction later and leaves fewer openings for an opponent to exploit.

The Arbitration and Mediation Act gives parties wide latitude to choose who represents or assists them in arbitration. The Legal Practitioners Bill, if enacted in its current form, would regulate legal representation before an arbitrator and may be invoked to question certain forms of on-record participation. What is not yet clear is how that regulatory framework would be applied inside an arbitral process, and what tribunals and courts will treat as decisive.

For planning purposes, the risk turns on how roles are allocated and recorded. If the Legal Practitioners Bill is enacted in its current form, careful teams will treat representation as a structural decision early, keep the record coherent, and retain flexibility in case licensing and collaboration under the Bill later come into play.