Saturday, November 29, 2008

'Xavier's Tears' By Adesina Ogunlana

Xavier is my friend. My learned friend. The other day we were in court together. Before a High Court Judge. On the same side of a criminal matter we were, Xavier my friend.
That day in court, as had become ‘traditional’ the matter could not go on. It is one of those cases where mishaps collapse on bad-luck, before colliding with accidents and in an effort to be extricated from the web of complication bump into a bog, only to sink into a quagmire! In such cases, you have plenty of motion but no movement. You are almost in the same shoes of the proverbial man toiling with a basket to empty the ocean! All the stake-holders in such cases are caught in a blind and sometimes it takes miracles for them to get out of the woods.

The day in question, it soon became pretty clear that a Prince of Persia was still active in the case. Of course adjournment of the case was inevitable. The culprit, this time around, responsible for the delay was the prosecution. So it made all the necessary “supplications” to the court to grant an adjournment. The honourable court did not appear too impressed but had no choice than to grant the wish of the prosecution. In the interest of justice.

In the interest of justice the court could not just bless the prosecution’s desire without hearing from the defence. The Chief Priest started from me. “Yes Mr. Ogunlana?” I said one or two words – and sat down. Then the Chief Priest asked from my friend. My friend Xavier. Then Xavier did the unexpected. He went lachrymose. Come and see tears. Xavier wept. Wept, not from the eyes. His words were his tears, words of lamentation.

According to my friend – he had had enough of the jinxed case, where no progress had been made for about three years. However, it was not the stand still that made my friend cry out. It was the fact that “My lord, since 2004, I have been doing this case without getting a kobo. My client is poor. My lord if by the next adjourned date progress can’t still be made, I’ll respectfully apply to the honourable court to be allowed from further participation.”

If my friend Xavier had hoped for a judicial assent to his “Escape Route” proposition, he was mistaken. Sorely. The Judge said Xavier would have to see the case to the very end.
Clearly Xavier was in a fix. He earned everybody’s sympathy, except that of a particular gecko. This is what the gecko later told me after the case was adjourned.
“I wonder why you people were sympathising with a man who has decided to conduct his business contrary to the commands of the Bible. Or have you not heard of the Scripture that says “The labourer is worthy of his wages.” That scripture, if I need to tell you is the totality of the law and jurisprudence of contract. According to the Bible, it is the normal, proper, just thing for a labourer to collect, receive something in exchange for his labour, sweat. That something is called Wages. From whom does the labourer receive the Wages? From God? No. From his friends or relatives? No. From passers by? No. From good-Samaritans? No. From Caesar? No.
The labourer can only receive his wages from him that he gave his labour to. Elementary, a point you say? Too elementary if you ask me. A labourer, mind you, is not a slave. Also note that the Bible does not say a slave is entitled to wages. It is true that a slave labours, but he is not a labourer labouring for his own good. His exertions, his sweat, his productivity is for the benefit and progress of another man. While a labourer is a passenger in the vehicle of achievement, a slave is just the fuel and the wheel of the vehicle.

I wonder why you people were feeling sorry for Xavier. I can feel sorry for a slave – his status is compelled on him. But when a labourer freely converts himself into a slave, why shed tears for him. I looked at Xavier in the courtroom – he was thin and looked harried – the perfect picture of a slave. I looked at his client turned slave owner or master and he too looked his part - robust, even plump, soft, rounded and relaxed. And this is the man Xavier said was too poor to even pay a farthing for the services of a good, competent and dedicated lawyer! Eh, stop feeling sorry for Xavier. Stop feeling sorry for your self too. Just go and get smart. Do you want to stop being a slave – lawyer? Then, go and get a copy of a book called “UNDERSTANDING THE SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL LAWYERS”The author’s name is “The First Gecko.” Lawyer slaves, go to the Gecko, and learn wisdom, jo!

Monday, November 17, 2008

"The Bad Old Days' By Adesina Ogunlana

Everybody or almost everybody has been told that I have a case to answer before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee at Abuja on Monday the 10th November 2008. The Announcer was none other than the 'trial court' itself, and for maximum coverage used a popular national daily newspaper to advertise the “coming event.”

The case has been on, at least on the cause list for five years. Five years of motion without movement, burning without heat.
Surprisingly there are many lawyers who do not know why I am on the cross of prosecution or that I am still standing trial before the LPDC. Such folks, in season, out of season, walk up to me, to enquire why the “Abuja Summons?”

This piece is actually meant for the innocent and the young at the bar and, well, the old but the forgetful. Let no one mislead you about my case with the LPDC. I have defrauded no one, I have cheated nobody. I have not committed any contempt. And no judge can say of me as an advocate appearing before him that I deserve prosecution. I am not insolent.
I am before the “Sanhedrin” for the crime, of speaking out. Speaking out, loudly, boldly, directly and truthfully. I am on the cross for having the guts to tell the truth, no matter whose ox is gored.

The Squib, I tell you and you are hearing from the horse's mouth, was born as a reaction. A reaction to rot, a reaction wrought from the fire of indignation at the abuse and misuse of office at all layers of authority in the Judiciary, as well as in the bar.

I tell you in 1996 when I became a legal practitioner, the Lagos State Judiciary was in no healthy shape. Bribery, even extortion of money was the order of the day. There were so many dirty judges and magistrates then, whited sepulchers. Lords they were, but not lords of Justice, or masters of Equity, captains of Fairness or paragons of Accountability. Rather they were judicial king-pins of mamonised proceedings and cash and carry rulings. As for the bar, it was reeking most foully of sharp practices. The bar was very scarce in the number of decent and noble practitioners. And infact, many older, senior lawyers employed crooked means to win their cases and served as no good examples to the younger ones. Such lawyers were and some still are Senior Advocates of Prepaid Judgements (SAPJ).

Things were so bad back then, that litigants preferred the services of lawyers who knew judges to the services of lawyers who merely knew the law! That, my dear, was the situation. It was a stinking corruption that gripped Lagos State Judiciary with so much swaggering arrogance and insolence.
Everybody - litigants, lawyers and the very few upright judges knew how terrible and horrible the situation was but nobody cared enough to do anything much about it.

Where was the Bar, the association of lawyers, all that while? The bar, I tell you, was on a voyage of self exile and cowardly, dumb retreat. No victim of oppression and injustice in the Judicial System could run to the bar and get succour. It was a Bar, self compromised either morally or intellectually. It was a bar which had forgotten her true mission of societal guidance and leadership.

Then thunder, in the form of the Squib, struck and the rest, as you are witnessing today, is history.
Permit to say this, the Squib is a positive factor in the little transformation of the Lagos State Judiciary from being blantantly corrupt and inefficient as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s to its present state. For those who may not really appreciate how terrible the misconduct of judges, magistrates and lawyers was in the 90s and the early 2000s in the Lagos State Judiciary, I tell you this true live story.

Four days after moving and losing a motion ex parte, a particular counsel, Barrister X, who himself is now a judge, came back to the court, very much prepared to move his motion on notice.
As he cleared his throat to do just that, Barrister X was shocked to hear the presiding judge say to the counsel on the opposing side.
“Are you aware that I have granted an injunction in this case?”
Barrister X and his junior could not believe their ears, however they managed to hide their shock and kept a discreet silence. It was later that they learnt the truth - their clients without notice to counsel, had gone to “see” the judge! Compromised, the judge had rewritten his records and ruling!

Unbelievable, you say? But that's the gospel truth. It was because of situations like this that the Squib was born. So that we can have the “good new days.”

Sunday, November 9, 2008

'The Fitness Question' By Adesina Ogunlana

Are you fit? Yes you, you of course, are you fit? I mean you and nobody else -are you fit? My friend, why are you looking over your shoulders? There's nobody behind you, so the question is still for you and about you - are you fit?

Am I referring to you? Why ask such an obvious question? My question is strictly, only, wholly and exclusively for you, so I ask again “are you fit?” and again-“are you fit?”

There you go again looking askance, as if I have put my words in a luggage of Greek and loaded them onto a train of Latin, wheeling on, on the rails of Aramaic. What is there too difficult to comprehend about my question?
Are you fit?
I forbid you to speak out the thoughts pulsating in your mind. Let me tell you what you wanted to ask me; the question you are dying to ask me is “are you fit yourself?”
You will know as I do, that your query is ad hominen and begs the question. Of course begging a question does not answer or remove it; so my question remains, Are you fit?
Oh, you are now prepared to give me an answer. Please tell the truth about your health, don't yaraduanise it -Tell it as it is really.
My pal did I hear you say, you are fit? Fit as fiddle? But, are you really fit? Why is your tummy and mid section a perfect copy of the shape of the AVOCADO pear?
Why do you always yawn so loudly and repeatedly as early as 9.00am in the morning, even after 8 hours night sleep?
Are you fit? Why do you suffer those sharp headaches and pains in your chest and feet? If you are fit, how come it takes you fifteen minutes to climb the stairs to the top of a three storey building and with your mouth agape? Say brother, are you fit? What about your waist that is almost in a perpetual state of disequilibrium?

And why are you always catching the flu? Your eyes tend towards the blood-shot and it is often a wrestle to get your (brown, sometimes, black) stuff out in the small room?
The other day, you attempted ten press-ups but when you got to just number three, you simply collapsed on your chest; Are you fit?
When last did you walk briskly or run a kilometer? So why say you are fit? It is now an ordeal for you to touch the ground with the tips of your fingers, even with bent knees?
How dare you say you are fit? How dare you? Even in indoor games? Are you as fit as you like to make people believe?
Can you do the marathon indoors? Are you not a flying whammer banger who gets beat less than three minutes after the commencement of intimate 'hostilities?'
And you Madam Fit, how come you are now a resident and stationary supervisor of the execution of house-hold chores? Sweeping, dusting, washing, cooking, e.t.c is not your look-out again, save dishing out intermittent orders to your kids and domestics alike? Are you sure you are fit?
Fit people burst with energy and are very active and no spirit of sloth can affix their bums to any immobile seat of inertia.
Are you fit? Let me ask again-are you fit? Yet you need to be fit. In fact you must be fit to carry out your serious tasks as a solicitor and barrister of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
As you well know, getting good briefs is challenging, executing them, tasking and even getting your fees, tough. So, Mr. Lawyer and Madam Barrister, we need all the energy we can get. We can't afford to be weak, wasting and worsted by poor health, otherwise we won't discharge our responsibilities adequately.

By the way do you know that the NBA Ikeja branch has started a weekly Wellness and Keep Fit Programme, between 7.00am 10.00am every Saturday, save Environmental Sanitation days. The venue is the Vining Memorial Church Cathedral Playing Field.

Two days we were there. Three Saturdays ago, we were there also. It was big fun sweating it out. Won't you like to come too?
Don't tell me you are fit and there is therefore no need for you to participate. If you are indeed fit, the Tigers programme will only make you fitter. And if you are like, like, well don't let us mention his name, you need it more than ever.
Next Saturday (15th November 2008) is the next occasion for the special Tigers Programme.

Please try and be there!