So VDM Is Now Speaking At The NBA Conference, And Nobody Wants To Talk About It

Let's just sit with this for a second. The Nigerian Bar Association, the same NBA that requires you to sit for law school, write endless exams, and greet senior advocates with your whole spine bent, has apparently decided that Very Dark Man belongs on a stage meant for lawyers. Not as a case study. Not as an exhibit. As a speaker.

Somewhere, a call-to-bar ceremony is happening right now, and a young lawyer who spent seven years reading law is watching this news wondering what exactly they did wrong with their life choices.

Now, to be fair, VDM has built something real, a following, a voice, a certain fearlessness that gets people talking. Say what you want about the man, he does not lack content. But "content creator with strong opinions" and "person qualified to address a room full of legal professionals" are two very different job descriptions, and somehow the NBA has decided they overlap.

This is peak Nigerian logic, though, isn't it? Relevance has quietly replaced expertise as the only qualification that matters. You don't need a law degree to speak at a bar conference, you just need enough Instagram followers and enough people arguing about you in the comments section. Trend hard enough, and eventually somebody with a lanyard will hand you a microphone.

And the wildest part? By the time he's done speaking, half the hall will be recording him for their own pages instead of taking notes for CPD points. That's the real conference happening, not the one on the agenda.

Maybe this is actually the honest state of things: influence has outgrown institutions, and now institutions are quietly inviting influence in, hoping some of that engagement rubs off on them too.

Either way, if VDM gets a standing ovation at a lawyers' conference, please, somebody explain to the law students still owing school fees what exactly they're studying for.