What can anyone say now about Justice Kayode Eso and Dr Olusola Saraki, both recently deceased, that has not been said with greater eloquence and insight by persons who knew them closely?
I met Eso only once, at the Third Obafemi Awolowo Foundation Dialogue, in 1995. His paper for the colloquium, which had as its theme: “Nigeria: In Search of Leadership,” was the product of a supple mind versed in the liberal arts, and an erudite piece of expository composition withal.
Eso’s career on the Bench was marked by judicial activism. But it was activism informed by the noblest ideals – to humanise the Constitution, to enlarge rather than constrict human freedom, and to make the law an instrument of citizen empowerment, not subjugation. He never flinched from raising his learned and resonant voice against governmental acts that were inconsistent with the Constitution or were carried out in disregard of the extant law or the rule of law.
Two cases are usually cited in support of this summation.
The first centred on the one Justice Eso himself called “the mystery gun man” in his engaging memoir — the gunman who sneaked into the studios of Radio Nigeria, in Ibadan, and ordered the staffers to replace a taped recording by Premier Ladoke Akintola already on air with another one pouring abuse and scorn on Akintola and his lawless “Demo” Administration.
Wole Soyinka, a militant opponent of the regime, was arrested and arraigned before the Ibadan High Court, in Ibadan, Justice Eso presiding, for the armed intrusion. Prosecution witnesses contradicted themselves on key points. One said the gunman was bearded; another said he was clean-shaven.
Eso dismissed the prosecution’s case. Ordinarily, no judge should be praised for abiding by his oath of office. But Akintola’s Western Nigeria was no ordinary place. A regime that came to power by usurpation preserved itself by the most brazen subversion of law and process. Those who did not fall in line stood to be humiliated and hounded out of the system. And many were the judges who dutifully fell in line.
Not Eso.
For his fidelity to the law and to his judicial oath, Eso was transferred to Akure, then a provincial backwater. Today, we can only speculate how a finding of guilty would have changed the trajectory of the life of the no-longer-mysterious gunman and, for that matter, that of literary history.
The second case stemmed from the outcome of the 1979 Presidential election that was supposed to inaugurate a new democratic order in Nigeria after 13 years of unbroken military rule. To be declared winner, a candidate must secure a majority of the popular vote, plus a majority of the votes cast in at least 12 and two thirds of the nation’s 19 states.
The leading candidate, Shehu Shagari, won the majority of votes in only 12 states. Then, cardsharpers for the NPN, led by Richard Akinjide (SAN), inveigled the electoral umpires into declaring Shagari the victor on the ground that he had won the majority of the votes in 12 states, plus one quarter of the votes in two-thirds of a13th, thus satisfying a literal interpretation of the electoral law that had never been canvassed, namely, that two-thirds of 19 states translates into12 states plus two thirds of a 13th state.
Holding that the law could never contemplate an absurdity, that what the law states is exactly what it means, the Supreme Court nevertheless went on to consecrate a legal absurdity.
By what alchemy could a state with defined geographic borders and a juristic person to boot be transmuted into two-thirds of a state? When was the state divided into three equal parts for the purpose of ascertaining one quarter of the votes cast in two of its three constituent parts? Which law provided for this curious expedient?
These were the questions that rang through Justice Eso’s robust dissent which, Professor Ben Nwabueze said in his majestic 2005 Justice Kayode Eso Lecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, should have been the court’s opinion. Nwabueze’s endorsement is all the more remarkable, considering that he was rooting for Shagari to become president
But Eso’s judicial activism extended beyond these cases.
There was his famous pronouncement that the Lagos State Government committed “executive lawlessness” when it evicted former Biafran leader Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu from his residence while determination of the ownership of the property was pending before the courts. There was the Adewumi case, in which he voided an edict of the military governor of Oyo State on the ground that only a decree of the Federal Military Government could override those portions of the Constitution that were operative.
Whether writing the lead judgment, concurring or dissenting, under military rule no less than under civilian rule, Eso insisted on maintaining a proper balance between the powers assigned to the Federal Government and those granted to the states by the Constitution. He sought to free the courts from technicalities that valued form over substance.
May his great example endure.
Olusola Saraki had already made his name and fortune in Lagos, where he ran a chain of clinics patronized largely by employees of government parastatals and private sector companies before he entered national politics to vie for the NPN presidential ticket in the First Republic. I saw him frequently at Lagos and Abuja airports, but never up close.
His preparation for the career move was vintage Saraki. He set up a state-of-the-art bakery in Ilorin, which flooded the city and environs with its delicious loaves and sold them below cost, undercutting Mafarosere bread, which had been a reliable staple in the community for decades, subsequently forcing it out of business.
The Saraki bakery would collapse not long thereafter, but its proprietor had endeared himself to the public. He dispensed favours small and large to just about anyone who could show up in the right place or at the right time.
He failed in his bid to clinch the NPN ticket for the presidency, but ended up as Senate Majority Leader.More importantly, he helped ensure victory in the Kwara gubernatorial election for his candidate.
Since then, nobody has become governor of Kwara or attained significant federal office on the Kwara quota without his imprimatur.. He would install you in the office, but if you failed to keep your end of the bargain, he took you out. Not for nothing did they call him “the strongman of Kwara politics.” He made and unmade.
Remember Adamu Attah, and Mohammed Alabi Lawal? Ask Shaba Lafiagi.
Only when Saraki sought to install his daughter as state governor, to succeed his son Bukola who had held the office for the two consecutive terms permitted by law did he run into a communal brick wall. Even he could not turn the conservative tide of Kwara politics.
The remarkable thing is that Saraki dominated Kwara politics so comprehensively and for so long without espousing any ideology or even what might be called a para-ideology; without any set of ideas that could be distilled into a framework for good governance and development.
He made no memorable speeches, wrote no books, set up no institutions. His Société Général Bank collapsed in insolvency.
Yet, when Saraki died, Kwara State went into deep mourning, and so did his political family and the countless beneficiaries of his munificence across the nation. The day he was buried, Ilorin and environs stood still. Persons of consequence and aspirants to that status gathered from all over Nigeria to pay their last respects, with the former military president General, Ibrahim Babangida, revealing that he had learned not a few political lessons from Himself the Oloye.
He had little in common with the grassroots; yet he was the quintessential grassroots politico.
Truly, this was a man of the people, and of his clime.
