How Akinjide defended the status quo (1), By Femi Falana

Chief Richard Osuolale Akinjide was born in 1930 to an influential family in Ibadan, Oyo State. He attended Oduduwa College in Ile-Ife from where he passed out in Grade One. Like most privileged members of his generation, Chief Akinjide travelled to the UK in 1951 for the proverbial golden fleece. He read Law at the University of London and was called to the English bar in 1955. Upon his return to Nigeria, Chief Akinjide was called to the local bar in 1956. Even though he was much younger than the British and Nigerian lawyers that dominated legal practice when he returned from England, he quickly made his mark in forensic legal advocacy and became a force to reckon with.

Chief Akinjide was a bourgeois lawyer who passionately believed in the sustenance of the status quo. In his flourishing legal practice and foray into politics, he was the most consistent defender of the right wing faction of the Nigerian ruling class. He joined the Ibadan Progressive Party founded by Chief Adisa Akinloye and Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu which later fused into the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon.

Chief Akinjide was elected a member of the House of Representatives. He later joined Samuel Ladoke Akintola’s Nigerian National Democratic Party which formed an alliance with the Northern People’s Congress that formed the  government at the centre. The Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, appointed him the Minister of Education at the age of 29. Notwithstanding his experience in the ministry, Chief Akinjide was strenuously opposed to right of every child to access education at the expense of the neo-colonial state.

Following the coup of January 1966, Chief Akinjide was arrested and detained for 18 months without trial. Upon his release from custody, he returned to active legal practice. In 1968, the Yakubu Gowon regime was finding it difficult to address the revolt of the Agbekoya Farmers Movement in the old Western State. In desperation, the Gowon regime detained the lawyer of the Agbekoyas, Alhaji Mojeed Agbaje. His lawyer, Chief Akinjide, filed a writ of habeas corpus for his release. Within six days, the trial judge, the late Dr. Akinola Aguda, heard and determined the motion ex parte for leave and the substantive motion and delivered his judgment.  Aided by the brilliant submissions of Chief Akinjide, the judge ordered the release of the applicant.

Completely embarrassed by the judgment, the military regime appealed against it. But the Western State Court of Appeal did not hesitate to uphold the judgment. From that moment, the case of Alhaji Mojeed Agbaje v Commissioner of Police (1969) 1 NLR 137 became the locus classicus and was relied upon by the various courts to set at liberty persons who were detained without trial under preventive detention decrees by all military dictators. Shortly thereafter, the military regime in the West wanted to make Chief Akinjide a commissioner.  Without consulting him, the appointment was announced on radio. Chief Akinjide turned down the appointment. The rejection of the appointment and his public spirited role in handling the Agbaje’s case endeared him to members of the bar. He was elected the chairman of the Ibadan branch of the Nigerian Bar Association 1969-1970. He also became the President of the Nigerian Bar Association 1970-1973.

Chief Akinjide was a member of the Constitution Drafting Committee constituted by the Murtala Muhammed regime to draft  the 1979 Constitution. The CDC was chaired by Chief Rotimi Williams SAN. However, unlike the minority report co-authored by the two eminent historians in the committee, Dr. Olusegun Osoba and Bala Usman, which had made a strong case for the enforcement of socio-economic rights of the Nigerian people, Chief Akinjide led the group that recommended that  the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy to be entrenched in the constitution be made non-justiciable. The military head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who promulgated the 1979 Constitution made sure that the entrenched fundamental objectives were devoid of justiciability.

Even though Chief Akinjide and Chief Obafemi Awolowo and others were conferred with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 1978, he said that he was “a better lawyer while Awolowo was a better politician”.  As the governorship candidate of the National Party of Nigeria in Oyo State in 1979, Chief Akinjide had cause to join issues with the candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria, Chief Bola Ige SAN, on the free education programme of his political party in a television debate. In dismissing the programme, Chief Akinjide said that a similar policy implemented by the Obafemi Awolowo regime in the Western Region in the 1950s had produced armed robbers and letter writers. In a rather caustic tone, Chief Ige had asked Chief Akinjide if the educated members of his family who had benefited from the programme were armed robbers and letter writers. Infuriated by the question, Chief Akinjide demanded an apology from Chief Ige.  He walked out of the programme when Chief Ige neither withdrew the question nor apologised. Notwithstanding his involvement in the campaign in Oyo State, Chief Akinjide was the counsel for Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the NPN when his election as President-elect was challenged by Chief Awolowo, the presidential candidate of the UPN.

The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal accepted Chief Akinjide’s submission on the mathematical interpretation of 2/3 of 19 states. In Awolowo v Shagari (1979) 6-9 S.C 37, the appeal filed against the judgment was dismissed by the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court. But Eso JSC and Obaseki JSC were ad idem on the legal interpretation of 2/3 of 19 States. It was the view of the two Justices that  the winner of the presidential election was required to win 13 states as a state could not be factionalised in law.

To that extent, both Justices disagreed with the decision of the five other Justices who had accepted Akinjide’s queer fractionalisation of the 13th state to arrive at 2/3 of 19 states. So, both Eso JSC and Obaseki JSC dissented on that point.

However, the two Justices parted ways in their conclusion when Obaseki JSC turned round to dismiss Awolowo’s appeal on the grounds that “the election to the office of the President was conducted substantially in accordance with the provisions of Section 34A(1)(c)(ii) which is within Part II of the Decree.” At the end of the day, it was only Eso JSC that upheld Awolowo’s appeal while the six others including Obaseki JSC dismissed it.

Even though Chief Akinjide lost the governorship election in Oyo state to Chief Ige, President Shehu Shagari appointed him the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.  In that capacity, Akinjide appeared in all constitutional cases of major importance in which the Federal Government was a party.  A review of the cases of the era revealed Chief Akinjide’s unwavering commitment to use the law to consolidate the hegemony of the ruling class. In particular, under his watch, the Federal Ministry of Justice deployed the law to wage a relentless war against the opposition. Thus, based on political disagreements between the NPN and the Great Nigeria People’s Party, the Federal Government deported Alhaji Dopman Shugaba, the then majority leader of the Borno State House of Assembly, to Chad. It was alleged that he was a Chadian and not a Nigerian.

But on account of the national uproar which greeted the deportation, President Shagari instituted a judicial commission of enquiry to determine the nationality of Alhaji Shugaba.

However, on the instructions of Alhaji Shugaba, a fundamental rights action challenging the deportation was filed at the high court in Maiduguri, Borno State by Chief GOK Ajayi SAN.  In spite of the stout defence of the action of the Federal Government by Chief Akinjide SAN, the presiding judge, Oguntoye J., declared the deportation illegal and unconstitutional. The court awarded N500,000 in favour of the applicant and ordered that he be brought back to Nigeria. In the case of the Minister of Internal Affairs v Shugaba (1982) 3 NCLR 915, the appeal filed by Chief Akinjide against the judgment was dismissed by the Court of Appeal even though the damages were slashed to N50,000.

For daring to popularise legal practice through the regular publication of law reports in the country, the powerful legal establishment decided to derobe Chief Gani Fawehinmi. There was an announcement made by the Nigerian Law Publication to the effect that the Nigerian Constitutional Law Report was published by “the controversial Nigerian lawyer”  in a complimentary reference to Gani. That was all the Attorney-General, who doubled as the Chairman of the Legal Practitioner Disciplinary Committee, needed to issue a query which directed Chief Fawehinmi to justify within 14 days why he should not be disciplined for touting and advertising himself.

Curiously, three days later, Chief Fawehimi was summoned to appear before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee. Convinced that his right to fair hearing was under serious threat, Chief Fawehinmi rushed to the Lagos high court for legal intervention to save his wig and gown.

The trial judge, Candide Ademola Johnson J. (as he then was), declared the action of the Attorney-General illegal and unconstitutional on the grounds of likelihood of bias. Totally dissatisfied with the decision, Chief Akinjide appealed to the Federal Court of Appeal which affirmed the judgment of the lower court. The matter was further pursued up to the Supreme Court but it was equally resolved in favour of Chief Fawehinmi.

Credit: Femi Falana