By Dr. Muritala Abdul-Rasheed, SAN
My assimilation of the Islamic doctrine on the inevitability of death as a divinely ordained end of all mortals has always predisposed me to stoical resignation in all matters of human thanatology. Having been convinced that Almighty Allah that gives life reserves the prerogative to take it whenever He pleases. He knows best and we cannot query his judgment.
That was my mood when I received the death of Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, SAN the immediate past governor of Ondo State who departed to the great beyond on December 27th, 2023. I was in Saudi Arabia, and during my leisure, was scrolling my phone to acquaint myself of trending news at home when I got a call from my friend, Ibrahim Lawal Esq, that the elephant had fallen!
As somebody who had worked very closely with Aketi, and interacted with him in formal and informal contexts, I cannot but feel a deep sense of loss and bereavement, but my mourning was considerably attenuated with the soothing balm of gratitude to God for the kind of life Akeredolu lived.
In his 67 years of sojourn in this plane of existence, Aketi had posted accomplishments, breakthroughs, stellar performances and landmarks that undeniably cemented his place in history.
Having been called to Nigerian Bar in 1978, Akeredolu put in the necessary hard work to take off as a rising star in the legal profession. His predilection for growth and development through the dint of unstinted self-application paved the way for success for him, as he was appointed the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Ondo State in 1997 at a youthful age of 41. During his tenure as the AG, it is on record, that he introduced a lot of initiatives to ease and develop the administration of justice in the state.
Just a year after he became the Attorney-General, he was conferred with the prestigious award of Senior Advocate of Nigeria by the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee in 1998. He was later appointed the Chairman of the Legal Aid Council. Another upward curve in the trajectory of Akeredolu’s professional career came when he was elected the 24th President of the Nigerian Bar Association in 2008.
His tenure as the boss of the lawyers’ Association witnessed a lot of reforms and initiatives that helped to both solidify the NBA as a body and advance the course of democracy in Nigeria.
The current NBA President, Yakubu Maikyau, SAN, OON, attests to this when, in his tribute, he described Akeredolu as “one of the most influential and courageous presidents ever to lead the NBA”
Akeredolu later ventured into politics, bringing to bear all his life’s experiences as a consummate strategist and topnotch administrator, and was eventually elected the Executive Governor of Ondo State, and sworn into office on February 24th, 2017.
His achievements were duly recognized by the people of Ondo State who re-elected him as the State’s governor in 2021.
His voice of wisdom was also lent on diverse issues in his capacity as the Chairman of the South West Governors Forum – a platform he generously used in advocating for socioeconomic progress for his peoples. Akeredolu was given a Nigerian National Honour of Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON), in October 2022, by the then President Muhammadu Buhari (GCFR.)
Most of Aketi’s achievements in public governance have already been put in the public domains by commentators and mourners, especially after his demise, I will therefore not delve into these in this piece. I will rather attempt to highlight some of his accomplishments as a bar leader, especially during his two year’s tenure as the NBA President.
Having been a frontline participant in Akeredolu’s presidency as the National Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association, I published a booklet entitled “The Legacy” which provided profound insight into his accomplishments as the President of the NBA during the 2008-2010 service year.
The booklet aptly focuses on how the NBA under his able leadership engaged the governments and other institutions with unparalleled vigour and vehemence for the purpose of re-orientating the polity towards the rule of law, good governance and responsible leadership.
The phenomenal success of that constructive engagement inspired by Akeredolu’s dynamism and irrepressible passion for good governance and social justice was well captured in the work. Space will not permit me to reproduce details of the well-documented accomplishments here, but I commend the booklet to anyone who wants to know why Akeredolu’s tenure has been tagged as one of the most successful by any president of the NBA.
There is no doubt that Oluwarotimi Akeredolu’s tenure has gone down as one of the most positively impact in the history of the NBA. During Akeredolu’s administration, the NBA became phenomenally vocal in condemning all kinds of ills in the system while advocating against the broadside of governmental highhandedness and aberrations of rule of law which reached a record high.
Some of the issues eliciting robust reactionsA of the NBA under Akeredolu included the face-off between the Lagos State Government and the Federal Government on creation of local governments by the latter, the escalation of criminality in different parts of the country, lack of economic and social development, continued corruption in all spheres of national life includi@ng Siemens and Halliburton scandals, and the incessant labour unrest.
Others included extra-judicial killings, the Niger Delta problem, the massacre in Jos, the Central Bank of Nigeria’s hammer on some commercial banks and uncanny secrecy surrounding the health challenges of late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
Akeredolu himself summarized the passion for good governance of his administration in the following words. “We are driven by a vision of a principled, people-oriented legal profession, which is accessible and able to respond to the needs of the society. This is an important component of our intervention. Nigerians want a justice system that works in the interest of justice. They rightly expect a system of justice that gives every person a fair and equal access to justice and guarantees the dignity, rights and security of every persons and all communities regardless of money or any other difference.”
It is on record that Akeredolu’s administration successfully hosted the NBA Annual Conference of 2009 in Lagos, twenty years after the State last hosted it. The Conference was adjudged a success using all parameters of rating a mega conference, including participation, crowd control and organisation, quality of faculty and papers presented, the depth and varieties of entertainment and diversions as well as feedback from the participants.
A unique feature of the Lagos 2009 was the debut of Bar News bulletin, which purveyed a daily account of events and activities of conference throughout the five-day conference. This development was fashioned after the IBA tradition of IBA News which gives daily accounts of events and happening at the IBA conferences. Credit should be given to Prof Chidi Odinkalu and Mrs Funke Adekoya (chairperson of the 2009 Bar Conference) for this initiative.
The writers of Bar News were seasoned journalists cum lawyers drawn from the Nation’s top national dailies. By any standard, the NBA Lagos 2009 remains till today a leading paragon of a successful conference hosting.
Another much touted milestone of his tenure as the NBA boss was the acquisition of the N200 million NBA National Secretariat in Garki, Abuja. This of course was a strategic measure that rebounds to Aketi’s laudable insight as a visionary leader.
Not to be forgotten were also various initiatives he took at the NBA’s headquarters itself. For instance, the NBA’s constitution was amended to, among other things, allow the NBA’s general election to be held in the month of July, before the general conference.
Furthermore, his administration also introduced greater latitude of democratic practices at the NBA’s general meeting as well as at the National Executive Committee (NBA-NEC) meeting.
Now let us briefly look at Public Interest Litigation in consonance with the Akeredolu’s administration thematic focus on the Rule of Law and responsible governance in Nigeria. The NBA became phenomenally pro-active in invoking judicial intervention on issues where consultation and constructive dialogue have failed.
Thus the body instituted many public interest litigations with a view to preserve civil rights and liberties, rule of law and constitutionality. Some of the cases filed by the NBA in this regard included NBA vs Attorney General of the Federation which prayed the court to direct the National Assembly to invoke section 143 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria when the late president was sick and was flown abroad without transmitting a letter to inform the National Assembly of his absence.
Another case instituted by the body is NBA Vs National Judicial Council & ORS which prompted the court to pronounce on the question whether the chief Justice of Nigeria has the constitutional right to re¬appoint the nominees of the NBA who have completed a term in the NJC without further recourse to the NBA.
The elaborate funeral organized for late Chief Gani Fawehinmi was also worthy of mentioning. The NBA under Akeredolu always played significant role in the burial ceremonies and payments of last respects to prominent members of the Bar and the Bench who transited to the great beyond.
However; the role of the Association in the burial ceremony of Chief Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi, SAN was taken to a sublime dimension which happily, was a due recognition of the enormous role the deceased human rights lawyer played on both the development of the law and protection and promotion of human rights in Nigeria. No lawyer had ever enjoyed such elaborate and honorable burial ceremony from the NBA!
Another high point in Akeredolu’s leadership is his penchant for allowing robust debate on all issues at the NBA General or its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in deference to the ideals of true democracy. No matter the serious nature of the matter, Akeredolu believes in democratic participation of all shades of opinion and would never impose his own view on the Association.
It is in-built tendency for lawyers to project their opinions on any issues no matter whose ox is gored and it could be very tiresome for a leader of the Bar to accommodate the ever differing hues of opinions of learned colleagues in all its ramifications. But Akeredolu was never a man to subjugate any shade of opinion for personal or other reasons, ‘all must be heard’ is the concise philosophy that drives his handling of affairs at NBA Meetings and not the ‘approve-approve’ method that is recently the vogue at NBA meetings.
An example of this is afforded by the incident of the Bar meeting at the last Annual Conference in Lagos where some vested interests led by Pa Tunji Gomez of blessed memory insisted that decision must be taken on whether or not to abolish the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria. Himself a Senior Advocate, Akeredolu resisted the temptation to sweep the agitation under the carpet as suggested to him by some Bar Leaders, rather he allowed a robust discussion on the subject and when consensus could not be reached, he recommended that the matter be referred to the next meeting of the National Executive Committee of the NBA..
Let us now shift focus to Aketi’s commendable record in crisis management, it is remarkable that for every great vision, there is always some contrapuntal force which aims at neutralizing the progressive idea generated by the vision. The NBA under Akeredolu had become too ‘hot’ a tool of social re-engineering that the reactionary forces were left with no other option than to attempt destroying it by sponsoring agents of schisms and divineness.
Suddenly there emerged discord and in-fighting among National Officers which rocked the body to its foundation, but it redounds to Akeredolu’s astuteness and masterly management that the Association survived the crisis. Many had feared that the NBA was heading for a temporary collapse just as it happened after the NBA conference in port Horcourt in the early 1990s, but through the sagacity of Akeredolu in collaboration with well-meaning Leaders of the Bar, particularly, the college of past presidents, the differences were resolved and the crisis was exorcised at the Enugu NEC, in 2010.
During his tenure, Aketi was always looking for ways to correct things, make things work, and advance the cause of the people. In line with the resolution of National Executive Committee of the NBA in Minna, Niger State in November 2009, Aketi led a protest against the kidnapping of lawyers in Aba & Umahia on February 14, 2010 to bewail the kidnapping saga that had then become a national calamity especially in the South East region which was then the hub of the dastardly act.
Also in July 2010 when four eminent journalists were kidnapped, he wrote, in a message carried by most of the national dailies, inter-alia, “The NBA wishes to sound this note of warning, that should any harm come to these, journalists, the leadership of the two police commands in, Akwa Ibom and Abia states, as well as the Director of SSS and other top security agents will be held responsible. The country expends colossal sums on security monthly. The reality on ground does not justify the security votes routinely appropriated to whet the insatiable greed of political office holders.
The Government must take serious steps to smoke out those responsible for this criminal act from their holes and ensure that they are tried and accordingly punished under the extant Laws for this heinous crime.”
Akerdolu’s NBA also reacted to the issue of interdiction of the process of appointment of Judges to the Court of Appeal which came to the fore in May 2009. In its communiqué in May 2009, after the NEC meeting in port-harcourt, the NBA condemned the lopsided arrangement that led to some geo-political zones being under-represented in the appointment of judges.
Stressing that the Court of Appeal Bench did not reflect Federal Character due to few members of the Bench from the South East and South-South geo-political region, the body called for an urgent correction of this anomaly..
In addition the NBA posted memorable exploits on the international scene under Aketi. During a week-long International Bar Association’s African Regional Conference which held in Cape Town,South Africa in March 2010, the Nigerian delegates were acutely involved, participated and featured in the programmes and were widely acknowledged to have contributed, both in terms of quality and quantity of presentations, more than any other country in Africa!
The NBA posted the same laudable performance at the Commonwealth Regional Conference which took place in Abuja between 8-11 of April 2010 as well as at the American Bar Association Section on International Law where NBA delegates formed the largest group apart from the host, the United States. The good performance of the NBA at the forum led to admission of its members as members of the Planning Committee for another international meeting in Paris held between 2nd – 6th of November, 2010.
It will also be on record that it is during Aketi’s tenure that a new ‘Model Constitution’ for Nigerian Federation was produced. The document, made by a committee headed by the ineffable J. B. Daudu, SAN, has been lauded as the best constitution ever proposed for Nigeria. Unfortunately, it was thrown into the dustbin of history by the National Assembly.
The fact that ‘Aketi’s name has been eternally preserved in the NBA’s hall of fame is incontrovertible.
Despite his love for his people, Akeredolu was never tied to the primordial instincts of parochial and tribal affiliation. His inter-tribal marriage to an Igbo lady, Mrs. Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, with whom he remained loyal in holy matrimony till the very end, also portrayed him as a man well-imbued with the value of fidelity.
Goodnight Aketi, My Boss, My Mentor.
• Muritala Abdul-Rasheed, SAN, Ph.D, (aka Murray), was the National Publicity Secretary of the NBA(2008 – 2010) during the presidency of late Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN.
