My Dear Squib,
I must confess straight away that I am not too happy presently. Since the Governor signed into law the new Magistrates Court Law, I have been having this nagging head-ache.
Of course being a magistrate, the new law affects me. I can see that a lot of legal practitioners, especially the “Na-inside-court-room-I-go-die types are very happy and excitied about the law and have described it many superlatives-: “revolutionary”, “pace-setting”, “progressive: etc.
But as far as I can see, that law has its dark-sides, it is certainly not all roses and rubies.
Take for example that clause that stipulates that magistrates have to work on Saturdays. Lets face it, that is pure and full-blown calamity.
Judicial work on Saturdays?
Every reasonable person knows a week has only three phases.
The 1st is the Work-phase. This is where you find Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. These are the days and hours of sweat, grunts and labour. The period where the greatest human virtue is “INDUSTRY” and where the scriptures of “He who does not work, should not eat” applies without reservation.
The 3rd phase is the day of Worship and Rest. That day is called Sunday. Some ignorant people say Sunday is the day of the Sun. But that cannot be true- for the Sun shines everyday.
Sunday, I tell you is the day of worship, even for those who do not have a regular God, like Jehovah, Allah, Orunmila or Osanobua. There are irregular deities like “Nature Worship, Soul-searching (behind closed doors) Environmental Sanitation including nail paring, hair-cuts and dos etc.
You must have noticed that I skipped over the 2nd phase It is on account of its greatness. The only day in this phase is Saturday. This is the happiest, liveliest day of the week. It is the day that cancels out all the pressures and stresses of the-1st phase where all people are involved in the kirakita athletics of the rat-race.
Oh glorious Saturdays, how worthy you are. You are the hub of the week and the very pillar of the world. The Society rotates on your pivot, for it is on your day that we all circulate most freely amongst our-selves.
It is on Saturdays that, we neither work nor worship. And as for rest-only the dead and the caged do that on Saturdays.
Saturdays is the day we all un-wind and obey the maxim. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Saturday is the day of celebration and circulation, of renewing the bonds of friendship and family by numerous social interactions. Saturday is the day of feasting, of wining, of dancing, of show-offing (clothes, shoes, titles etc)
Saturday in short, is the day of socials. And what is man, without socials?
Yet it is this very special day, the blest day, where man is truly in his elements, that the Governor of Lagos State and the Legislature of the State-have decreed that magistrates shall no part in its joy and “jollification”. Rather they have turned it to, for magistrates” an additional day of labour and pain.
Please Mr. Squib, do something for us in this matter. Although it is true that I hardly read your magazine and have dismissed it in many informal gatherings as a “useless paper”, it is only to you I can turn to in this dark hour for help and possible salvation.
I trust you are prescient enough to see this new magistracy law, especially the work-on-Saturday prescription as a conspiracy of the Executive and the Legislature in Lagos State against the third arm of government, the Judiciary.
Squib, please do something. Otherwise all my fine geles and other apparati of Owambe presence and essence will rot away un-used.
In fact the government is very insensitive indeed on this matter. How can any normal person be expected to discharge such a big responsibility like Adjudication competently on a day when his friends, relatives, neighbours etc are always out there, catching fun at weddings, coronations, graduation parties, funeral outings, house-warming parties, sporting events etc?
Editor, I rest my case. Please take it over from there.
Yours faithfully
Chief Magistrate Ogewunmi Igbaladun
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
'The New Deal In Town' By Adesina Ogunlana
There’s a new, big deal in town. But guess what, only few people appreciate or recognize the opportunity the deal offers to make quick, easy bucks. And legitimately too. Yet the deal has been on for about five weeks now with the full support and patronage of the Federal Government. Of course the promoter of the deal, the said Federal Government has been quite loquacious about the business. Everywhere it goes the F.G talks about the deal. It saddens me, however that in the main, most lawyers are quite apathetic about the whole thing.
Yet the Federal government is dead serious about this project and is prepared to expend billions of naira on it. In this enterprise, the Federal Government is very liberal and open. It is not shutting the door against any one and to partner profitably with the government, you don’t need to have any university degrees or specialist training of any kind.
You only need to give your self a particular name and sobriquet of the Robin Hood hue, present some hardware to the Federal Government and there and then, you collect your cool millions in the multiples, after signing a document saying that “old things have passed away.”
I never knew lawyers, of all people will let such a golden opportunity of making hay pass them, without seizing it with both hands and even legs “sef”
Instead of collaborating quickly and effectively too with the government on the matter, many lawyers are busy earning pea-nuts, moving one ‘toro-kobo’ motion or the other, sometimes before intellectually dumb and deaf judges or drawing up one miserly agreement or the other. I understand that in Lagos State now, some lawyers and magistrates are fighting tooth and nail to be appointed Judges instead of hooking up on the new deal presented by the government. How sad! The situation is like ignoring a box of gold to brawl over a sack of charcoal!
Depressing, quite depressing I tell you. The way I see it, lawyers need to get educated afresh, especially in money matters. Fortunately there are so many good books on this vital subject of money making and how to make it yafu-yafuly.
My consolation on this matter is the positive response of the leadership of the Tiger Bar (the NBA Ikeja Bar) to the Federal Government offer.
If you had noticed, you would have seen the Chairman of the Tiger Bar, the incumbent Elekun of Ekun land, Bibiowa Dave Ajetomobi Esq going about these days with a particular hat, popularly known as Niger Delta perched on his head. The said hat makes Dave Ajetomobi, an Ijesha man, diluted matrimonially by an Igbo lady, looks every inch a militant chieftain – the very class of people the Federal Government anxiously wants to do business with, by name Amnesty. I was further encouraged to hear Ajetomobi’s deputy, Dare Akande Esq, the Otun Elekun making solid plans with a local smith and hunter for a quick supply of about a hundred pieces of dame guns, a hundred pieces of Ashanti machetes and a hundred pieces of hand-held wood and rubber missile propeller (catapults).
I was privileged to also know that somewhere in Ondo State, specifically somewhere in the heart of Barrister Niyi Akinmola’s ancestral riverine hamlet, the Tiger Bar leadership has made out a freedom fighters’ camp, named “Camp David” in honour of the leader of the branch.
Since Camp David has been established and the Tiger Bar leadership is expecting delivery of the aforesaid impressive materiel, the only outstanding need to qualify now for business with the F.G is to have a corps of militia to inhabit Camp David for just a week or so before they disarm.
This difficulty is being looked into urgently and creatively. The Tiger Bar leaders, for your information have saddled the branch’s Welfare officer with the task of sourcing enough militants within the legal community within a week.
The said Welfare Officer who is well known to this writer has been appointed the General Recruitment Orientation Officer of Camp David (GROO). According to the GROO, when speaking to the Press, in his GECKOVILLE headquarters in the Katunga Wilderness, somewhere between Ogbomosho and Ilorin, he was in no doubt that he will succeed at his task. According to the GROO, the following set of legal practitioners would be given preference in the recruitment drive
(a) “Abe-Igi” lawyers
(b) Aluta lawyers
(c) New, disgruntled, unemployed and unemployable wigs
(d) Dismissed magistrates
Nonetheless any other interested gentlemen of the bar can apply. And you know in the profession, gentlemen, mean gentle men, and ahem, women! So come one, come all-oh yea emergency militants!
Yet the Federal government is dead serious about this project and is prepared to expend billions of naira on it. In this enterprise, the Federal Government is very liberal and open. It is not shutting the door against any one and to partner profitably with the government, you don’t need to have any university degrees or specialist training of any kind.
You only need to give your self a particular name and sobriquet of the Robin Hood hue, present some hardware to the Federal Government and there and then, you collect your cool millions in the multiples, after signing a document saying that “old things have passed away.”
I never knew lawyers, of all people will let such a golden opportunity of making hay pass them, without seizing it with both hands and even legs “sef”
Instead of collaborating quickly and effectively too with the government on the matter, many lawyers are busy earning pea-nuts, moving one ‘toro-kobo’ motion or the other, sometimes before intellectually dumb and deaf judges or drawing up one miserly agreement or the other. I understand that in Lagos State now, some lawyers and magistrates are fighting tooth and nail to be appointed Judges instead of hooking up on the new deal presented by the government. How sad! The situation is like ignoring a box of gold to brawl over a sack of charcoal!
Depressing, quite depressing I tell you. The way I see it, lawyers need to get educated afresh, especially in money matters. Fortunately there are so many good books on this vital subject of money making and how to make it yafu-yafuly.
My consolation on this matter is the positive response of the leadership of the Tiger Bar (the NBA Ikeja Bar) to the Federal Government offer.
If you had noticed, you would have seen the Chairman of the Tiger Bar, the incumbent Elekun of Ekun land, Bibiowa Dave Ajetomobi Esq going about these days with a particular hat, popularly known as Niger Delta perched on his head. The said hat makes Dave Ajetomobi, an Ijesha man, diluted matrimonially by an Igbo lady, looks every inch a militant chieftain – the very class of people the Federal Government anxiously wants to do business with, by name Amnesty. I was further encouraged to hear Ajetomobi’s deputy, Dare Akande Esq, the Otun Elekun making solid plans with a local smith and hunter for a quick supply of about a hundred pieces of dame guns, a hundred pieces of Ashanti machetes and a hundred pieces of hand-held wood and rubber missile propeller (catapults).
I was privileged to also know that somewhere in Ondo State, specifically somewhere in the heart of Barrister Niyi Akinmola’s ancestral riverine hamlet, the Tiger Bar leadership has made out a freedom fighters’ camp, named “Camp David” in honour of the leader of the branch.
Since Camp David has been established and the Tiger Bar leadership is expecting delivery of the aforesaid impressive materiel, the only outstanding need to qualify now for business with the F.G is to have a corps of militia to inhabit Camp David for just a week or so before they disarm.
This difficulty is being looked into urgently and creatively. The Tiger Bar leaders, for your information have saddled the branch’s Welfare officer with the task of sourcing enough militants within the legal community within a week.
The said Welfare Officer who is well known to this writer has been appointed the General Recruitment Orientation Officer of Camp David (GROO). According to the GROO, when speaking to the Press, in his GECKOVILLE headquarters in the Katunga Wilderness, somewhere between Ogbomosho and Ilorin, he was in no doubt that he will succeed at his task. According to the GROO, the following set of legal practitioners would be given preference in the recruitment drive
(a) “Abe-Igi” lawyers
(b) Aluta lawyers
(c) New, disgruntled, unemployed and unemployable wigs
(d) Dismissed magistrates
Nonetheless any other interested gentlemen of the bar can apply. And you know in the profession, gentlemen, mean gentle men, and ahem, women! So come one, come all-oh yea emergency militants!
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