AZU ISHIEKWENE
AT the beginning, I was tempted to think of the author as a reluctant
memoirist. Hon. Justice Sunday Akinola Akintan says his two greatest
motivations for writing Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life are 1) to
fortify the slender repertoire of written records in Yorubaland and 2)
to heed the counsel of famous lawyer T.O.S. Benson that the only way for
a man to avoid being buried with a life’s worth of library is for him
to write a book before he dies .
Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life is not an autobiography and
should not be so mistaken. Yet, in six parts comprising 21 chapters and
218 pages of this memoir, the author uses the autobiographic technique
of fact focus to render, connect and weave strong emotional threads
which help to sustain the reader’s interest.
The author could have been “Engineer Akintan”, and he probably would
have received his father’s blessing for his choice. Pa Emmanuel
Olofingunleka Akintan was a very religious man (in the days when
religion and polygamy were not irreconcilable). He was a prosperous
cocoa farmer in Aiyetoro Owena in Idanre in the old Ondo Province, which
later became Ondo and Ekiti states.
If his son did not want to become a priest or a farmer, perhaps he
could have become an engineer, especially since the young Akintan was
good in mathematics.
“The legal profession,” Akintan writes, “was a novel profession in the
family and the impression he (Pa Akintan) and many others in the
community had was that it was a profession where you could hardly find
an honest living person.”
This impression — or perhaps more accurately, this prejudice — was
not limited to Akintan’s community in those days. The general feeling
among swathes of the local population in many parts of the country,
especially in rural areas, was that when lawyers and interpreters were
not busy looking after themselves, they were acting as puppets and tools
of the British colonial masters.
His overriding passion was not only to study law because he was
enticed by its esoteric rituals – the wig and gown and the dramatic
courtroom courtesies — though he could not deny the pull. More
important, it seems, was his desire to demonstrate that there could be
an honest living lawyer, one that could uphold the fundamental values of
honesty, fairness, fidelity, faith and devotion to family and
community, and yet make a decent living.
He believes that this prospect is possible in law, though less so in
private than in public practice. He believes, also, that law can and
should not only be an instrument of recompense but also a leverage to
build community.
As a young lawyer in the office of the Solicitor-General posted on
relief duty to Kano, for example, he intervened to right the wrong done a
private beer manufacturer by a foreign competitor that was hiding the
empty bottles of the local company and thereby increasing the local
company’s production cost.
But Akintan didn’t stop at calling out the unfair practice. He
recommended a waiver to the minister of finance on the company’s
outstanding excise duties and also a financial bailout for its working
capital. The minister obliged. It would be interesting to know how many
young lawyers in a similar position in public service today would do
that for a company they do not know in a state far away from their state
of origin, and all for nothing.
That is not all. In the Companies Registry and Business Name Registry
under the Federal Ministry of Trade where he worked for three years
(and for a period under the supervision of the formidable Sokoto prince,
Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, then permanent secretary) the author deployed
the human face of the law yet again.
This comes across in Chapter 11, where Dr. Moses Majekodunmi whose
company failed to deliver on a construction contract related to Festac
’77 was to have been arrested and detained on the orders of General
Obasanjo, then military officer in charge of works. Signing off the file
with “immediate effect” and letting heads roll would just have been in
line with the spirit of militarism of the time, especially since
Obasanjo had made his remarks in red ink.
But Akintan took a different, potentially dangerous track. “I read
through the file,” he says on page 91, “and found that nowhere was a
demand made for a refund of the money paid to the contractor. I
therefore wrote that the action requested was premature since the
request for his arrest and detention was in respect of recovery of
debt.” General Obasanjo responds a few days later, “OK, the demand
should be made.” And that was under the military.
Again, the law is deployed as an instrument of social cohesion when,
as a High Court judge in Ondo, Akintan was confronted by the case of a
woman whose well-off siblings had conspired against and demolished a
stall she attached to her father’s house. The stall was her only means
of livelihood but her half-brothers who claimed their late father had
not paid any dowry on her mother wanted to dispossess her of the stall,
which was all she had.
It was a case where a judgement, however carefully thought out and
reasonably delivered, would hardly have been justice. It would only
deepen strife and the family’s grief and misery, perhaps extending it
for generations down the line. After a prolonged back-and-forth
(including, in fact, a recusal by Akintan at some stage), both parties
agreed to let the judge’s wise counsel prevail and to settle the matter
out of court.
Although the book is divided into six parts, Akintan spends over half
of it on his roots, his growing-up years in Owena/Idanre and his early
career as a lawyer in Lagos. The next big chunk – his years at the Bench
from 1978 to 2008 – gets less in page count but packs significantly
more in his acts on the big legal stage.
Would he still be able to maintain his high moral ground at a time
when contrary values appeared to have taken hold? Would he stand firm
when the appurtenances and accoutrements of his exalted position could
open the possibilities, even justification, for compromise – or, as Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti would say, to chop and clean mouth?
He provides some insights through the lenses of his judgements, between
chapters 15 and 17, and closes with his non-judicial and post-retirement
activities in the next four chapters.
But to read the judgements alone — whether the one involving a
witness who turned a case on its head under cross-examination (page
110), the case of the murder of the chairman of the Oredo Local
Government Area (shortly after the Anini conundrum in Benin), or the
case of the Attorney General of the Federation & others v. Alhaji
Atiku Abubakar & others (2007) — without understanding the story
behind them (the research, preparation, diligence, courage, transparency
and single-minded commitment to justice and fairness) would be a
disservice to the author and the book.
Of the judgements in his time as High Court judge, Akintan shares a
particularly significant one: the 1983 electoral dispute between Chief
Michael Adekunle Ajasin (of the Unity Party of Nigeria) and his
estranged deputy, Chief Akin Omoboriowo (who had defected to the
National Party of Nigeria, the ruling party).
If the election tribunal headed by Justice Olakunle Orojo had not
heeded Justice Akintan’s advice to go the extra mile by sitting long,
arduous hours to hear all the addresses by counsel and deliver its
judgement by Saturday afternoon – 72 hours before the Monday deadline
permitted by the enabling law – the state would have become
ungovernable, as the electorate would have been obliged to believe that
the panel deliberately ran down the clock and sided with the electoral
commission to defraud them by imposing Omoboriowo.
His leading judgement in the Supreme Court in the case of Joseph Ona
v. Atenda, which laid to rest the indigene-ship and non-indigene-ship
palaver in the Federal Capital Territory, is adtingas terminus pavulorum
sententiae (a landmark judgement) hardly remembered in the charged and
often emotional debate about residency status in Abuja. Until I read
this book, I did not know I had just about as much right in Abuja as the
Gwari.
What are his views on social issues such as the death penalty and
congestion at the courts? He believes, based on at least two cited cases
he presided over in the High Court, that unreliability of evidence,
especially by suborned or malicious false witnesses, “increases the
possibility of innocent people being convicted and sentenced to death”,
and he is therefore opposed to it.
In a sense, Akintan’s position is consistent with the Yoruba proverb,
“Ori yeye ni m’ogun t’aise lopo”, derived from the mythology of the
missing trumpet of the King of Otolu. After ordering the beheading of 17
palace workers at the Ogun shrine on suspicion that they were
responsible for his missing trumpet, the king later found that it had,
in fact, been stolen by his younger son who wanted to supplant the heir
apparent.
Can you imagine, for example, how the judge who wrongly convicted
Archie Williams for stabbing and killing a 30-year-old white woman in
her home in Baton Rouge, Louisana, in 1982, would have felt if he had
sentenced him to death by execution before DNA evidence led to his
freedom after 37 years in prison?
The credits at the end of the movie, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice
and Redemption”, an adaption of Bryan Stevenson’s book, says, “For every
nine people who have been executed in the US, one person on death row
has now been proven innocent and released, a shocking tale of errors.”
On case congestion at the courts and general administration of
justice, he argues that the re-introduction of the Assizes system, the
restriction of some cases to the Courts of Appeal, and better management
of the electoral system could help decongest the appellate courts,
especially the Supreme Court. “The position grew so wild,” Akintan
writes, “after the 2015 election that the number of election petitions
far outstripped all the other cases filed in all the courts in the
country” (page 149). It doesn’t look like the situation is getting
better.
If, like me, you’re not cut out for such rituals, there’s still
something to keep you turning the page. A family-bound reader, for
example, would connect easily with Akintan’s fondness of his mother; his
deep bond with his wife and family; his frustration when his niece,
Ebun, who, even though he had taken and treated as his own daughter,
still got engaged behind his back; and his devasting sense of loss when
he received the news in London that Uncle Wright Akindoroye, Ebun’s
father, who was instrumental in his studies abroad, had died in a car
accident.
The office of judge carries its own risks as well, and Justice
Akintan does not understate them. He cites two examples reminiscent of,
but even far more dangerous than, the threat faced by Sonia Sotomayor
(Justice of the US Supreme Court) in her book, My Beloved World,where a
case she was handling as lead prosecutor exposed her and the judge to
the terror of an Asian mafia.
In Justice Akintan’s case, some persons whom he had convicted for
armed robbery (they were eight; five had been executed and three
sentenced to five years in prison) sidled up to him at a departmental
store in Lagos; on another occasion, the half-brother of someone he had
convicted for murder approached him at a wedding in London and reminded
him of the case. Both encounters leave him dazed and frazzled, to say
the least.
His literary style, like his profession, is conservative — the next
edition could use tighter edits. Also, when he touches on politically
charged subjects like the Supreme Court’s decision on the Attorney
General of the Federation and others v. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; his
encounter with Justice Atinuke Ige after Chief Bola Ige was murdered; or
his role in the trial of Justice Walter Onnoghen as Chairman of the
Preliminary Complaints Assessment Committee of the National Judicial
Council, the journalist in me is left asking for more details and
insights.
The memoir may not be as grand as Rev. Samuel Johnson’s The History
of the Yoruba, or as thematic as Saburi Biobaku’s The Origin of the
Yoruba, both of which offer profound insights into Yoruba culture and
history, from a different genre. Also, the memoir may not fulfil the
author’s ambition to enrich the tome of Yoruba literature in, say, the
robust and adventurous style of the Awujale in Awujale: The
Autobiography of Oba S.K. Adetona Ogbagba II, for example. Yet, anyone
genuinely interested in the evolution of the proud, fearless and
industrious Ondo people and the mosaic sub-nationalities especially the
Akoko, Ikale, Owo, Akure and Ondo people, with their rich culture,
riveting landscape and enchanting dialects, will benefit greatly, as I
have, from Akintan’s memoir.
As I closed the last page, I had no doubt that Justice Sunday Akinola
Akintan is leaving behind something more than what he bargained for
when he answered T.O.S. Benson’s call to write, keeping in mind that
Benson did not live up to his own lofty counsel to write a book before
he died. Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life is a legacy for not just
one but for many libraries.
Edited version of retired Supreme Court Justice Sunday
Akinola Akintan’s book by Ishiekwene, MD/Editor-In-Chief of The
Interview, and member, Board of Advisers of The Point Newspaper.
