"Saturday?' By Adesina Ogunlana

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