By LANRE ADEWOLE.
Penultimate weekend’s win of the Nigerian Bar Association presidency by Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, is the third consecutive time her South West zone would be saddled with an unwanted representative at the helm of the lawyers’ body. And this time, it hits closer home considering that the disfavoured, is also Yoruba. That sounds like Olusegun Obasanjo’s first presidential mount.
The “emergence” of the Bar’s first elected female president, has further unclad the lawyers’ association, widely seen as consistently hemorrhaging value and credibility since democratic rule returned, like the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:25-34 who bled non-stop for 12 years before Christ’s help came.
Hopefully, NBA will be rescued too, before it’s too late.
That Muyiwa Akinboro SAN; the anointed of the South West, also lost scandalously, even conceding the second position in the three-person race, to little-known Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, is the death knell for Egbe Amofin, the supposed umbrella body for South West lawyers, which should ordinarily be a primus of the three zones rotating the body’s headship, considering that the Yoruba have dominated the legal profession since fellow Ijesa and history maker, Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams began practising in Lagos on January 13, 1888 after being called to the English Bar on November 17, 1879.
He would go on to lead the Bar for 15 years, between 1900 and 1915, unfortunately dying in office on March 15. 1915 at just 59.
Infact, until the Bar presidency was made rotational among North, West (South West plus Edo and Delta) and East, the dominance of the South West, especially its big names practising in Lagos, was unmistakable in the eminence of the leadership roll-call.
All now, seems a mere reminiscence for the nostalgic Yoruba elders of the Western Bar, whose influence is now at ground zero.
By convention, since the adoption of the rotational presidency, the leadership of the producing zone, is always expected to present a consensus candidate to the other two zones for bloc support and the last time the Egbe Amofin would appear to have a say in the Western zone producing the president of the Bar, was the unanimous adoption of now-late Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, in July, 2008. With the West presenting him to others as its sole pick, he was even elected unopposed, making him the 24th president of the association. To emerge as the sole presidential candidate for the then-prestigious post, was a clear signpost of the remarkable dominant influence of Egbe Amofin on the Western Bar and sadly too, the successful outing 18 years ago, would be the beginning of a skid and the elders who used to be oracles of a sort, now seem out of sorts in sorting out whatever the problem was/is. Several of them are my egbon, but their failure to buck the worrying trend, is inexcusable.
Since Akeredolu, it has been the turn of the Western Bar thrice to lead the lawyers’ body and thrice, South West leadership has failed, losing twice to its junior partner; Edo/Delta (first to Augustine Aleghe in 2014 and Olumide Akpata in 2020, both incidentally from Edo). Even now that the two-state junior partner would magnanimously stay out of the race it could easily win again, leaving the field open for three Yoruba contestants, an unwanted candidate still won.
What is the Egbe missing?
Today, Nigeria’s jurisprudential colossus and dear uncle, Chief Oluwole Oladapo Olanipekun, SAN, is easily the most towering figure of the Western Bar. Respected nationally and recognised internationally, the question is, why are his own back home, either not hearing him or turning what the Yoruba will call eti ikun (the striped ground squirrel’s proverbial deaf ear, though the animal isn’t actually deaf but always daring enough for humans to come very close to it before making a move for an escape route) to his admonition and endorsement?.
Before the contentious poll, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria I was visiting in his Banana Island, Lagos home gave me an insight into the fraying within the South West Bar over consensus endorsement and mentioned a former governor of Lagos State as the prime mover of the Oyinkansola agenda. The president-elect is a protégée of the former Lagos ruler who is also a Silk.
With the outgoing president, Afam Osigwe, SAN, seen as actively pushing the same agenda, my host, who is openly anti-Igbo’s brand of politicking (he’s always accusing them of demanding from others what they can’t give and he says he is ready to give anything and everything to ensure Obi loses woefully in Lagos), was very displeased that Osigwe was trying to choose his successor for the Western Bar. He told me he equally refused to heed the NBA president’s plea to help rein in some young lawyers in the zone, vehemently opposed to the alleged facilitating role Osigwe was playing for Oyinkansola.
It would seem the Osigwe coup worked and the ex-governor SAN, got his wish, despite the eventual winner and Akangbe; the first runner-up, vying from the same Lagos space. Of the trio who ran, the griping, failed-anointed, Kuta-born Akinboro has the biggest name recognition, having served as the national scribe of the association between 2010 and 2012 during the headship of J.B Daudu from the Northern zone. Having also led the Abuja branch as both secretary and chairman, endorsed by Egbe Amofin, supposedly representing all South West lawyers and presented to both the Eastern and Northern Bars as the West’s pick, it should concern the endorsing senior lawyers in his camp that he got so badly trounced by a starter like Badejo-Okusanya whose husband’s name recognition in the PR community can’t also be overlooked. To cap it, the president-elect just made SAN less than a year ago.
Yes, shocking upset isn’t a rarity in political contests and endorsements, even when region-wide, like what Akinboro supposedly got, can backfire, but losing consistently, is losing relevance or playing the wrong cards.
Is it likely the South West has been barking the wrong tree since the Akeredolu win, or other zones are deliberately undermining, to subdue its influence, by going rogue with its anointed?
I will first go with self-sabotage. I believe the S/W leaders were consumed by their assumed invincibility in the making of the Akeredolu presidency (I wish he lived longer; he could have been a courageous Nigerian president of Yoruba descent) and didn’t move early with changing times. Just six years after the Akeredolu nomination success, the zone’s leadership had become so fragmented that it could not agree on a consensus candidate when it was its turn again. The trio of Mrs Funke Adekoya, Chief Niyi Akintola and Deacon Dele Adesina, all Silk, refused to have any of them as the sole candidate, despite the open preference of Chief Olanipekun for his in-law, Adesina, also a former national secretary of the association, during the presidency of same legal luminary.
Given what I know, I will say 2014 was the turning point for the South West part of the Western Bar and unless it quickly restructures, it’s going to be a forever free fall into antiquation.
The two times South West lost to “outsiders” in the “junior partner” from Edo; tribe politics was its undoing as well as the empty pride of the race itself. At a point during the 2014 internal wrangling, I became a self-appointed conciliator, making midnight calls to candidates and their main backers and strident opponents, pleading with them to close ranks to forestall a possible “steal” by an outsider, when all I was supposed to be, was a journalist, merely reporting all sides to the friction. All the egbon in the crisis were adamant though I must acknowledge the statesmanship of Uncle Wole during our conversations. Well, what was not supposed to happen, happened. Alegeh, from Edo, stole in and “stole” a win, from the three bickering Yoruba candidates, whose collective votes far outstripped the winner’s total. The Yoruba themselves will say “okere gori iroko, oju ode da” (the squirrel, like a prized target, has irretrievably escaped, the hunter is left with a disappointed visage and regret).
One of the feuding Yoruba trio infamously ejected delegates he camped in an Abuja hotel the moment he was pronounced defeated and the rest is history. Today, all the actors in the unpleasantness that governed the fractious and botched consensus nomination are still associates. So why the proverbial fight-to-finish of 2014? I put it down to sheer ignorance and arrogance though lawyers are supposed to be learned than the rest of humanity.
By 2020, the Western Bar’s junior partner had mastered the soft underbelly of the South West and predictably again, it was multiple candidates in same Adesina and Babatunde Ajibade, with Edo/Delta axis coming with a sole candidate again. Again, unity trumped divided majority. Again, South West’s anointed, Adesina came third, behind Ajibade and the eventual winner, Edo’s Olumide Akpata who wasn’t even a Senior Advocate!
And did he win handsomely! Apart from winning more than 54% of the total votes cast, his total votes were more than the two Yoruba candidates’, combined! That was when Egbe Amofin should have recalibrated but it would seem the regional platform is doomed for the lych bell to toll for it.
For a body that is almost toothless, why should anybody fear its bark. So when my Banana Island host told me the ex-governor Oyinkansola sponsor had been asked to back off, I just smiled inwardly because we both knew he would not listen to the South West Bar leaders and so it turned out. Nobody respects yesterday’s horse rider. It’s the one on the mount that matters. And the election wasn’t even close between Egbe’s pick and the “renegade” winning candidate, though that won’t change the fact that Oyinkansola is leading a minority presidency. Those who voted against her, were more than those who voted for her but opposition split their votes. If Akangbe and Akinboro had joined forces! Many “Ifs”.
The president-elect is coming in with a lesson for numerous stakeholders and even herself, if her victory won’t bowl her over. One, as minority-elected, she would have to be expansive in victory magnanimity. Considering that just 38% of the eligible voters showed up, though the voting process was admittedly wonky and had to rescue at the last minute for the entire process not to be moribund,NBA itself has a lot of confidence rebuilding to do. Add the dwindling interest in voting, to allegedly compromised voting machines! Who would really want to show up next time if NBA election is deemed predetermined and fixed. A rigged system does nobody any good including those currently benefitting from it. Every empire will expire.
If I were INEC’s Joash Amupitan, himself a very senior lawyer and a professor of Law to boot, I will throw everything into making subsequent elections, starting with the August 15 Osun’s, a repudiation of the always-criticizing NBA, which in itself, has been conducting elections with micro-mini integrity in past years. If Amupitan can resist the temptation of the political class and not give guilty verdict to the innocent and acquittal to the guilty, he would have delivered a stinging rebuke to NBA which cant even conduct election for just 82,172 registered voters but always quick to condemn.
For Egbe Amofin Oodua, it’s time for deep soul-searching, starting with withdrawing from future endorsements especially when the buy-in of majority members, particularly the hothead hawks in the association, isn’t in.
And wait, is it me or the nomenclature itself sounds like having some esotericism to it; like some cult name?
End.
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