My first love
is, you must have guessed wrongly, if you had Hon. Justice Ibitola Sotuminu
(2001-2004) in mind. The first dalliance was actually with Hon. Justice
Christopher Segun in the twilight of whose regime in March 2001, the Squib was
born.
Segun C.J and
the Squib hardly knew themselves, before the infamously temperamental judge
bowed out of service in May 2001.
Then Sotuminu
C.J came on board. Her ladyship was one judicial dame whose regime had the most torrid
sessions with the Squib. A most tempestuous affair, it was, heady, awesome,
full of sound and fury, signifying something.
The Sotuminu
administration saw the audacious irreverent combative, whistle blowing Squib as
more or less a terrorist paper and tackled it head on as if it were levying a
counter-insurgency war. It became virtually treasonable for members of the
judiciary, including judges to be seen in public with copies of the Squib. No
less than five times were Squib vendors, arrested and detained by the police at
the behest of the Sotuminu administration. And the editor himself was dragged
before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee.
Mrs. Toyin
Taiwo, now Honourable Justice Toyin Taiwo was the Chief Registrar then, saddled
with the unpleasant and difficult task of dismantling the unrelenting Squib,
which became even more ferocious and vociferous in his attacks and expose!
When Sotuminu C.J
quit the beat by way of retirement the new Squib 'lover' turned to be Hon. Justice
Fatai Adeyinka. Adeyinka was an indifferent lover. His short tenure of about
six months saw a deliberate policy of avoiding the Squib, despite some damaging
reports against the Chief Judge.
In the same
2004, a new helmsman Augustine Adetula Alabi, more popularly known as Ade Alabi
mounted the saddle. The first half of the regime was relatively peaceful and
quiet in his affair with the Squib, which did not lost its bite. The second
half was a different story all together.
The intention of
the administration at that point was to send the Squib publisher out of the
legal profession via his prosecution and conviction for allegedly defaming
Lagos State High Court judges before the Disciplinary committee of the Body of
Benchers. It was a difficult and tense period which tested and deepened the
resilience of the Squib Editor. Fortunately, a most formidable and sagacious
legal representation was always ready for the Squib, courtesy Daddy 3, late
Chief G.O.K Ajayi SAN.
After Alabi,
came Akande C. J. Akande was our first and only true love so far of all the
Chief Judges. This Chief Judge, most unusually saw and took the magazine as a
friend of her administration and a much needed member of the family and not an
outlaw or outcast.
When Akande
departed in 2012, after a three year stint, it was the turn of Ayo Philips C.J.
Never a friend of the Squib but managed to tolerate the “irritant” fairly well
enough until she too bowed out in 2014.
The departure of
Philips C.J in 2014 saw her blood and judicial sister Atilade J emerging her
successor. Thus Atilade C.J. is Squib’s latest beaux.
From all
indications, Squib’s latest love wants a calm and peaceful affair and not the
stormy, fiery, feisty type that the veteran matador has become used to.
Thus it was that
some few weeks the new chief invited the Squib at a public occasion to
celebrate with her the arrival of what her ladyship called “Squib’s Rival”, the
magazine of the Lagos State Judiciary.
Squib’s rival?
Really? I am waiting
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