By Emmanuel Obe
Reflecting on my undergraduate days when I was always trying to catch up with public lectures, talks, symposia, colloquiums and the likes both on campus and in town, my mind went back to how I followed the late Justice Chukwudifu Oputa to three cities across Nigeria to listen him speak.
Those were the days when I covered the distance on foot several times from Iddo on the mainland through Idumota on Lagos Island to Kofo Abayomi Street on Victoria Island just to hear public figures speak at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). It was on one of those days that I met Onuora Nzekwu, the co-author of the legendary Eze Goes to School, the very first novel we read in secondary school. That was during military rule but you could hear Nigerians speak fearlessly about the government.
Back on campus at the Nigeria Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS), we were feasted with such forums, especially those that had to do with law, human rights and jurisprudence. It was there that I first saw General Emeka Ojukwu, when he honoured an invitation to be at the Second Felix Okoye Memorial Lecture. Awe-inspiring, he looked young and energetic. He caught the attention of everyone as he made his way to a seat reserved for him.
But the real meal of the day was served by the man I had longed to see with my two eyes: Hon Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, Justice of the Supreme Court. The brilliance with which he delivered the lecture completely masked his minuscule voice. He lived up to the citation on him in which he was described as the Socrates of the Supreme Court.
I don’t recall the title of his lecture but he tried hard to lay bare the fundamental principles of justice. For him, justice was nothing if it meant nothing to the ordinary man on the street. In that respect, all the people and institutions connected to dispensation of justice can only be qualified as agents and institutions of law, not justice. He used the story of a lawyer who was hurrying to court in London to illustrate his point.
He said a lawyer with gown, wig and brief in one hand, used the other hand to hail a taxi. “Courts of Justice!”
The taxi stopped and the driver asked, “Where?”
“How don’t you know the court of law over there!” the shocked lawyer exclaimed, pointing towards where the courts were.
That’s when the taxi driver relaxed and asked the lawyer to hop in. On the way, the taxi man told the lawyer how there was no court that dispensed justice in the land; what they knew was the courts where lawyers argue about law, not justice. Oputa made my day.
A few months later, while travelling back home, I stopped over at the University of Benin, which had become a routine for me to see my former coursemates and colleagues. I had actually spent one year at UNIBEN before moving over to UNILAG. There, I saw a notice of the Second Idigbe Memorial Lecture to be delivered by Justice Oputa for the following week. The lecture was sponsored by the inimitable Gani Fawehinmi. I made a promise to make my return Lagos through Benin to coincide with the lecture.
At the lecture, Oputa also spoke about justice. He lamented how tough it could be most of the times to determine what justice was, given certain circumstances in which judges found themselves. Citing the popular legal maxim, ‘Let justice be done though the heavens may fall,’ the respected justice said every judge has a duty to justice regardless of the consequences. But he wondered what kind of justice it would be if the heavens fall and crush everybody. He had to break the rule to talk about a matter still before the Supreme Court. In that matter, he said a man was convicted and sentenced to death by a lower court. The matter was pending on appeal when the man was executed. He then asked what justice could be for such a man and his family if his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court. On that sombre note, the lecture ended. But it was indeed a day well spent.
The next time I was Justice Oputa’s class was in Port Harcourt at the Second Dr. Nabo Graham-Douglas Memorial Lecture. We were on holidays during one of the general university closures. That could have been when students rioted to protest fuel price increase from 39.5 kobo to 42 kobo per litre.
The lecture was organized by the Faculty of Law of the then Rivers State University of Science and Technology. The citation was done by the university’s orator, Prof. Bedford Fubara, who took time to pronounce the names of the erudite justice: Justice Chukwudifu Akunne Oputa. That was when I knew that Oputa from Oguta spent good time in Rivers State where he was principal of one of the foremost indigenous secondary schools, Kalabari National College, Buguma.
Oputa likened Nigeria to how a drycleaner in London described the agbada he gave him to wash. After listing all the other clothes, he said the drycleaner was confused about what to call his agbada. Taking a hard look, the drycleaner declared, “Parachute!” Oputa said Nigeria is as complex to define as it was for the drycleaner to name his agbada.
Though it was mere coincidence that I followed Oputa from Lagos through Benin to Port Harcourt, I had always had a passion for him. Growing up in the late ‘70s, I had keen interest in current affairs. My father used to send me to buy newspapers and afterwards read out the contents to him. Newspapers soon became a prime source of education for me. Nevertheless, I didn’t pick up interest in the home studies sections, where I could probably have corrected my deficiency in arithmetic. I was focused on who was who in Nigeria. That was how I got to know Oputa as the Chief Judge of Imo State at the time that Ambrose Allagoa was the Chief Judge of Rivers State, Edem Kufre for Cross River and Emmanuel Araka for Anambra State.
I do not know why Oputa stood out. He was always in the news. The newspapers ran stories on Imo courts frequently, often tagging a small picture of him along. His tenure coincided with when Sam Mbakwe was the governor of Imo State, the governor who was ever enmeshed in controversies. Oputa survived Mbakwe and found his way straight to the Supreme Court in 1984 after the military struck.
It was at the Supreme Court that Oputa’s sterling cerebral disposition manifested. It was always a delight to read his judgments, in which justice was not only done but could be seen to have been done. He spent only five years, retiring in 1989. But his legacies still loom large within the judicial circles.
At the Supreme Court, he formed a triumvirate with Justices Kayode Eso and Andrew Obaseki, who at that time were seen as Nigeria’s finest jurists. However none of them made it to Chief Justice of Nigeria, as they retired one after the other during the tenure of Mohammed Bello, who spent eight years as CJN. It was indeed Mohammed Bello that gave Oputa the name, Socrates of the Supreme Court. And he was indeed a philosopher on the bench.
In the year 1999, at the age of 86, the nation still found Oputa useful to be entrusted with the task of reconciling Nigerians who had reason to be aggrieved during the crisis periods in the history of the country. President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him Chairman of the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, Nigeria’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He passed on in 2014 at the age of 97.
Born in 1916 in Oguta in Imo State, he started his education at Sacred Heart School, Oguta and Christ the King College, Onitsha. He first studied for a degree in economics at Achimota College, Gold Coast, now Ghana before moving to University of London to take a degree in history. He enrolled for a degree in law later and was called to the bar in 1953. He was appointed a high court judge in 1966, made the Chief Judge of Imo State ten years later before being upgraded to the Supreme Court in 1984
His quotes given in his judgments are often cited by lawyers, judges and scholars. One of his quotes goes this way, “Without education, what is man but a splendid slave , a reasoning savage vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence derived from God and the degradation of passion participated with brutes.”
Another one says, “If you are a judge and you are corrupt, where do we go from here? Then everything has come to a halt. If the legislature is corrupt, you go to the judiciary for redress. If the executive is corrupt you go to the judiciary for remedy. If the judiciary itself is corrupt, where do we go from there?” NNL.
