A speech by former Edo State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice Charles Uwensuyi-Edosomwan (SAN) on behalf of the Body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (BOSAN) at a special court session in honour of the late Deji Sasegbon (SAN), a law reports publisher, who died last December 10 at 63.
• Continued from last week
To Deji, any encounter with me was an opportunity to practise the much Edo he garnered as a primary school pupil in Benin City while his father worked as a doctor there. He would jokingly howl some Edo vernacular expression he probably heard his family domestic staff utter and ask for a translation. If not this, he would regale you with fond stories of his stay in Benin City that metaphorically made that town his own. As a Bini, I am gratified that his stay in my beloved Benin City gave him so much happiness with fond memories. His nice stories compensated for all the concocted shady stories that others intending puns, tell of my Benin.
For Deji, kindness was not just all rhetoric or laughs. He lived it in action even more. I recall with gratitude the huge discounts with which he favoured us young lawyers when in 1989 he came out with the must-have Nigerian Supreme Court cases – NSCC. Those volumes took law reporting to redemptive levels to cover the yawning space still left in law reporting that the revolution in legal practice wrought by the late Chief Gani Fewehinmi (SAN) on the establishment of the Nigerian Weekly Law Reports, had sought to cover. They offered a stripling young lawyer who had started practice for himself straight out of the National Youth Service (NYSC), the great opportunities of tooling him to stand his ground amongst very senior lawyers who had more law books.
However, just like me, most Junior or young lawyers coveting these precious materials could barely afford them. When even the substantial discounts would not cut it for us young lawyers, Deji offered us generous payment plans that kept the precious books in our budding libraries. With those law reports and the subsequent publications- ((The Nigeria Companies & Allied Matters Act Law & Practice, Sasegbon’s laws of Nigeria (SLN Encyclopedia of Nigerian Law and Practice)) from his DSC publishing company, myself and young lawyers in my mold became more sure-footed in our game because Deji had put more in our tool bags than we would otherwise have had without his books.
In a world full of fakes and hypocrites, Deji was of the small part that was the odd exception. He lived the code of his sublime and honourable upbringing and the creed of his personal travels. His sincerity was constant and was always expressed in action and in calm lower decibels. He made more impact with his calm voice than any bedlam that hypocrisy and insincerity can whip up. He was a powerful man who had the uncommon gift of showing his mercurial strength in his calm manners. But woe betide that other that would be so unfortunate as to chance on his mild mannered ways unduly. That person would be met with the untold ferocity of a keenly primed mind.
As a lawyer, he was an asset in any legal team. I happened to have been in several high profile cases with him and at every turn, he showed rare insight into legal problems. His gargantuan physical size paled in comparison with his intellect in terms of their sizes. His recognition as a brilliant advocate as a silk should have come much earlier than it did by his conferment in 2004. His reputation as a conscientious and remorseless prosecutor is now the tale of legends. He prosecuted with the best in Lagos and the country that included the late Justice Abiodun Kensington, Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour, the late Justice Bayo Manuwa, Mrs Ogunlami, and Fola Arthur-Worrey.
Just as he was as brilliant an advocate, so was he principled in his ways. His personality, in its straight-forwardness was anathema to corruption, fakery, false airs and dishonesty. He transformed into a formidable opponent when confronted with any of these minuses in character. Now that Nigeria is fighting a war against corruption, Deji would have been the unblemished incorruptible candidate to lead that war for us.
He would have conscientiously gone ahead with the job of cleaning out our Augean stables and ridding us of the cancer of corruption along the lines of the redemptive axiom: “No Friend, No Foe”.
Thus when one hears that Deji was a restive adolescent, the conclusion that the adolescent matured into a calm reflective personality, the sort of which was able to impact his trade – the law profession, leaving huge foot prints all over it by the sheer high-value of his publications and brilliant advocacy, leaving it much better than he met it, becomes compelling.
His family, gutted today for their loss must feel lucky to have had such a blessing as one of them. He was a complete family man who excelled as Oge told us, as a husband and father. His immense ability to love his fellow human being poured itself abundantly on his family.
Deji’s love for Oge his love, soulmate and partner with their children is the stuff of great family stories. His seamless care and attention built for them a very happy family that Oge even with growing age has remained beautiful, and their children transformed into well educated steady young people with great prospects. Deji’sdutiful love and care had much to do with these.
Returning to the early posers dropped in this tribute regarding the adverb “almost” associated with “disconsolate”, one does take consolation in the truth that Deji though gone from our midst physically, would always remain with us. Anyone who stocks his seminal works in his library would always feel him. Anytime one cites or references cases, or statutes or legal notations from any of his works, the phenomenon of his “isness” is reaffirmed in our consciousness.
Concluding, Deji was the sum of his life’s journey. His family and pedigree that boast of a famous doctor for a father, a lovely and dutiful mother that personally over saw his growing-up; family relationships that connect famous names, such as Sir Kitoye Ajasa, Dame Oyinkan-Abayomi, Macaulay, Sasegbon and other names of solid Lagos, Egba and early-Nigeria establishment, bore and raised him with the highest standards, planting the seeds of high achievement in him.
His circle of friends and band of brothers at the university in Ife enjoined him to imbibe the following:
- To assail against redundant convention – Deji attacked the yawning gap in law reporting and produced the NSCC;
- To abhor tribalism – He was, indeed, de-tribalised;
- To stand for humanistic ideals; He lived a humane existence;
- To live the ideals of true friendship in comradeship and chivalry – We his friends, and I am sure Oge his darling wife would be credible, competent and compellable witnesses to those parts of him.
Through his said fraternal association, he learned to de-psychologise and impersonalise himself or his ego in favour of higher ideals, that impelled him to put others before himself; to prefer goodsense to sloganeering; to prefer truth to cant; to learn before leaping; to prefer progressive change over stasis and to act over yap by walking the talk. He thus became the kind of human being and a man I would want my grown son to emulate or the growing ones to be like in future.
Deji, the lights went out for you on the morning of Saturday, December 10, last year. Regardless of our mortality that prevents us from continued physical fellowship with you, we would continue to cherish your memory and appreciate the Almighty for bringing you our way to impact us in all the wonderful ways you have done. Adieu my rugged brother. Sail away to your rest.
