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Pursuit of Justice
Foreword
By The Hon Justice Kayode Eso CON, LLD
The book - The Pursuit of Justice and Development - a veritable and credible academic production is not just new, it is indeed a welcome addition to our ever-growing Law shelf. For quite sometime now, it has become the regular custom of writers and publishers of law literature to utilise the opportunity of the retirement of judges as an avenue of bringing out publications, which, though mostly not written by the retired judex, have turned out to be a compendium of essays written by seeming admirers. The beauty of this practice is that the law literature shelf is getting enriched and in a profession, where literature could not be overcrowding, this is a blessing by itself.
However, The Pursuit of Justice and Development is one with a difference. To start with, it has been edited by a top academic and seasoned biographer, Yemi Akinseye -George, who has carved a name for himself in the academic world by several acceptable productions on current law topics, added to which is the most recent joint production, with Emeritus Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi, acknowledged as one of Africa’s greatest historians and biographers, of the biography of this writer, a book which was almost sold out before a formal public presentation. The second editor is a well-known lawyer/journalist, Gbolahan Gbadamosi, a name now synonymous with the best in law/journalism.
Apart from such highly placed editors, is the fact that the book has a completely new dimension to what is currently regarded as a routine practice of doing honour to a retired judex? It is in two parts. The first part deals with the treatment of such law subjects that hardly have a place in textbooks. The second part is in the nature of a tribute to the retired judex that is a short biographical treatment of his life on the Bench.
It is convenient to start with the second part. The first of these tributes, though short, speaks volumes. It, inadvertently, but really gives the raison d’etre for the production of the book itself. Chief Folake Solanke, SAN, speaks of Justice Onalaja as a man of prodigiously vast learning and with a tremendous knowledge of decided cases as, according to her, have been “amply demonstrated in his”, that is, the judge’s, “four volumes of his Commentaries From The Bench”. They are loaded, as the Senior Advocate has further observed, “with citations, local and foreign”. Chief Solanke also referred to Justice Onalaja as one “with a total commitment to the rule of law and the administration of justice”. That such total commitment is rare now-a-days, could be garnered from daily reports of some judges’ bad behaviour, or rather judicial misbehaviour, on the Bench. Only very recently, the news media gave gory information to the world of the arrest, charge, and bail of a Chief Judge and some other judges. They were being arraigned for the scandalous offence of demanding and obtaining bribe from litigants. Worse still, the Interpol was alleged to have interviewed some Justices of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in regard to a debilitating accusation of corruption! True or false, this is a situation hitherto unknown to the jurisprudence of Nigeria! Ugly incidents have been testified to by the National Judicial Council! An institution, which normally should function as the Parliament of the Judiciary!
Another contributor, Mrs Hariat Ade Balogun sets into glow the microscope from which this judex observes justice, thus laying the basis for the judicial biographical life of our subject. Justice Onalaja’s judicial vision is seen to be based on ethics, not just ethics as featured by the philosophical Nichomechian approach, but ethics as based mainly on pragmatism and humanity. Here is a judex who takes his community and culture into consideration, in his approach to the justice of a matter. Here is a judex who notes, as a reality, what seems elementary but distant to others. Here is a judge who is aware of the fact that the continued existence of this country could only rest on unity and tolerance, with the family as the source. And so then must naturally be distant from Justice Onalaja, the sense of mere judicial academic pronouncements sans practical relevance.
The tributes continue. Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Charles Uwensyi-Edosomwan, in his own biographical sketch, has lamented the fact that the judicial career of Justice Onalaja did not extend to the Supreme Court of Nigeria. The Senior Advocate, however, took solace in the notion that our Court of Appeal needs to be strengthened and that Justice Onalaja was a blessing to that strengthening. It is true and I did hold and still hold the view, that only very few cases of constitutional importance and very important points of law should reach the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeal should be fully equipped to take all cases of appeal as if it were the last court of appeal. Care must therefore be always consciously taken that the justices of our Court of Appeal are not in any form inferior, whether in learning or in discipline to the Justices of the Supreme Court. Justice Onalaja, to my judgment, is not inferior to the best in the Supreme Court.
In so far as a retiring judge or justice is concerned, the hierarchy of the court from which he has retired should not be material. What is important is that the judge or justice has contributed to law and justice and ultimately to humanity, for indeed, a judge lives for ever in his contributions to the law and justice in his pronouncements, both in and ex cathedra.
That the revered Lord Denning’s career ended in the English Court of Appeal was as desired and indeed requested by that great judge. The Court of Appeal stance did not diminish from his stature nor has it made him second to any in the English legal or judicial history. So be it with our subject. And though he could not have desired, like Lord Denning, ending his career in the Court of Appeal, the Honourable Justice Moronkejki Omotayo Onalaja is, by any standard anywhere, a great judge. He has consistently been a pride to the Nigerian law and would feature forever in our judicial history even yet to come.
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