“A man can die but once”, William Shakespeare said some centuries ago. When the Bard of Avon expressed this immortal axiom, he must have made that remark about great men like himself and the likes of Justice Babakayode Eso, who died last month.
In his book, For Whom The Bell Tolls, John Donne observed that: “No man is an Island, entire of itself; everyman is a piece of the continent, part of the main;…Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Unfortunately for death, as it tolls its bell, it cannot silence the legacy Eso left for the legal profession and the good virtues he bequeathed to students to emulate. Learn as if you were going to live forever, Mahatma Gandhi posited, adding “live as if you are going to die tomorrow.”
News of Justice Eso’s death hit the nation like a 21st century version of Hiroshima blast. On the fateful Saturday – November 10 – at the basement of Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), after the announcement, students started recounting his intellectual achievements and personal meeting to mourn the foremost jurist.
Dayo Ogunyemi, the immediate past president of the OAU Law Students Society (LSS), regretted his inability to hold a personality lecture for the late justice.
He said: “I remember I was discussing with members of my executive council about the annual Kayode Eso Lecture. I blame fate that we could not hold the Kayode Eso lecture during my own time despite that we made necessary arrangement for it. We wanted to do it on the 25th of August and it didn’t hold.
“The second time, I went to see Baba Eso for the new date of the lecture. He told me he never subscribed to the idea of holding the programme in November. It was as if he knew death was coming. He did not approve the November date we presented to him. Baba Eso travelled and never returned from that journey. It was as if he knew about his imminent death. So he was prepared for it.”
Eulogising the late jurist, a Law student said: “Baba lived to fight the cobwebs of technicalities and injustice. Baba inspired my own life. I remember that he was the first person to encourage me as president of Law students told me: “your advocacy skill is real, you will make a good lawyer” and that stoked my interest further. If my story would ever be told, they would say that I lived during the time of Justice Kayode Eso.”
It really showed that Justice Babakayode Eso was a great legal luminary; he did not only touch his immediate environment but also touched the lives of the people, who are far away from him. A 300-Level student of Law told this writer how she was privileged to meet and rubbed minds with him. The student said her life changed after the conversation.
Baba Eso was a legal octopus, jurisprudential ‘iroko’, and intellectual per excellent. I recalled the dissenting landmark judgment he made in the case of Shagari vs Awolowo. I believe that the works and landmark judgments of Baba Eso will continue to enrich legal profession in Nigeria.
Today, this concept referred to as “Fundamental Human Rights” after the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by United Nations has not only come to stay, but has won a Nigerian citizenship by its domestication in Chapter IV, Sections 33 – 44 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Trust Justice Eso, he did not fail to remind us in the case of Ransome-Kuti vs Attorney General of the Federation (1985) NWLR (pt 60) 221 that: “fundamental human rights are rights which stands above the ordinary laws of the land and which in fact is antecedent to the political society itself. It is a primary condition to a civilised existence…”
Baba Eso, the “Mystery Judge” (an allusion to his ‘not guilty’ dissenting judgment in favour of Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, the Mystery Gunman, who stood trial in the 60’s for his role in an ‘offensive’ broadcast) lived life as a principled man.
Emeritus Professor D.A Ijalaye, in his third Fellows Lecture on Corruption in the Public Service of Nigeria: A Nation’s Albatross at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in July, 2008, lived proved William Shakespeare’s assertion wrong that: “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred in their bones.” I can’t agree less with the legal giant, for Justice Eso affected lives in his sojourn on earth. The good testimonies of the touched people was not interred with the bones of the late jurist when his remains were buried last week. Indeed, Justice Eso lives on in our heart.
Opeoluwa, 300-Level Law, OAU