Date: 2016-10-08

Six years after the Supreme Court ordered the reinstatement of the 49 lecturers sacked by the authorities of the University of Ilorin, John Olusola Bayeshea, SAN, who acted as counsel to the affected lecturers, has opened up on the undercurrents that governed the celebrated case. Speaking with our correspondent, ADEKUNLE JIMOH, in Ilorin, the legal practitioner likened his experience in the said case to a suicidal mission in the mode of putting one's neck in a guillotine.

CAN you give us a bit of your background?

I am a reverend and Senior Advocate of Nigeria. I am a native of Ole in Kabba/Bunu Local Government Area, Kogi State. I attended Saint Barnabas Primary School, Ilorin from 1966 to 1971, and Fatimah College, Ekan-Meje near Omu-Aran from 1972 to 1976. I attended the then Kwara State College of Technology for Cambridge A-Level exams from 1976 to 1978. In 1978, I was admitted into the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) for a degree course in Law, and I graduated in 1981 with a Second Class Upper division. About 16 years later, in 1998, I proceeded to Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) for master's degree in Law and I emerged as the best graduating LLM student in 2000.

Before then, between 1981 and 1982, I was at the Nigerian Law School. I was called to the bar in 1982 with Second Class Upper division. In the same OAU in 2009, I got a second Master of Philosophy in Law. Then in 2012, I graduated from the United Mission African College here in Ilorin with a master's degree in Divinity. I did the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Kaduna. I was at the Kaduna State House of Assembly from July 1982 to July 1983. But while I was at the House of Assembly, I was also teaching at the Kaduna Polytechnic. I taught the likes of former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye. I taught him Company Law in his Higher National Diploma (HND) level.

I also worked as counsel in the Chambers of Chief Bayo Aluko Olokun, who is now late. During the elections of 1983, I was posted as a young counsel to be the lawyer for the National Peoples Party, led by the late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, in the whole of what has now been broken to Zamfara, Sokoto and Kebbi states. After the elections in November 1983, I returned to join the Kwara State Ministry of Justice as a state counsel. I was with the Ministry of Justice from 1983 to 1986. It was in November 1986 that I set up the Chambers of John Olusola Bayeshea and Co. I have been in private legal practice since then. In 2008, I became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), by the grace of God.

What was growing up like?

At age eight or nine, I was brought to Ilorin to live with an uncle. My parents released me to him to train me. Growing up was okay except for the challenges of a youth living under somebody. I was well trained but it was tough. I remember that I had to do some hawking with groundnut oil, now modernised and called vegetable oil. They would put it in bottles and I would go round Ilorin, especially the old GRA. I also worked a lot on my uncle's farm outside Ilorin; a place called Adio after Alapa. All this prepared one for a very challenging and tough life ahead. I don't have any regrets at all.

That means you were not born with a silver spoon?

Far from that. It is by dint of absolute and total hard work and the grace of God that I have been able to get to where I am today. There is no godfather. I have always been on my own. God has been the one leading me, helping me, teaching me and upholding me.

How did you come about reading Law?

We were the very first set of the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) in 1978. In the secondary school I attended, I was the best student in History, Literature in English and Geography. Naturally, those were the subjects I went to offer at the Kwara State College of Technology. When I got there, I was also the best student in history. Our teachers are still alive. When it was time to fill the JAMB form, the teachers in the Department of History then counselled me to choose History and Philosophy. I picked History and Philosophy with the University of Nigeria Nsuka (UNN) as my first choice of university.

Before I could submit the form, the immediate younger brother of my father, who was then in the United Kingdom for a study and was registrar of the Federal Polytechnic, Yola, encouraged me to put in for Law. That was when I changed my course and university of choice. So I picked Law and chose the Ahmadu Bello University.

What is the difference between life in the courtroom and outside of it?

Life in the courtroom borders entirely on professionalism. You go to the place, ply your trade and practise your profession to the best of your ability. People are chained, oppressed, depressed and suppressed, and you need to go to court to seek justice, freedom and liberty for them. I have practised from the lowest to the highest court of the land. It is always a joy and a delight if you are able to do it. It is just like a doctor who has a patient that is terminally ill, and through the doctor's service, God is able to make a difference and the person gets well. He will be very delighted and happy.

Sometimes, you also have cases that are too bad. A turnaround may come and at other times there may be no turnaround and you lose them. That is not the end of the world. You win some and lose some; that is the joy of the profession. It is also a joy to practise against other known and notable legal practitioners, as we do it in the spirit of friendship and fellowship, because we call ourselves learned, noble and honourable people. Everything we do must reflect those traits, especially if you have additional responsibility as a senior advocate to show others the way to do it, how to do it and do it well, and to maintain integrity and honour.

On life outside the courtroom, the society looks at you expecting certain minimum standard of civilised behaviour from you as a lawyer. As morally decayed as the society may be now, with corruption, loss of values and the likes, they still look up to lawyers with some reasonable level of expectations that they can make a difference in the society. So I also try to maintain that in order not to disappoint people, not to disappoint my God in particular, and also to maintain the good name of my family.

I also have an additional responsibility as a reverend that not only is it that I am representing my family, I am representing God. It is not the title that God and people are interested in, they are interested in your Christ-like behaviour; a behaviour that will encourage others to say 'I want to know his God and religion, if he can be of that status and still serves God.' That is a very big mission that I strive daily to achieve so that God Himself, who called us into the ministry, will not be disappointed in us. Sometimes there is a clash between certain issues and your profession, and even in calling in the ministry of God. That has never been a problem for me because God always gives an escape route.

Why did you quit the justice ministry for private legal practice?

When I was in the ministry, my horizon was limited. I love to identify with people in their problems and find a way to improve on my profession. Even the calling that came later was also borne out of identifying with people to solve issues. Mostly people have problems with government, especially the down-trodden. You know the Nigerian society is an oppressive capitalist one. It is a society where those who have do not want others to have. There is too much gap between the rich and the poor. Those who are influential are there lording it over the rest. So when you stay in the ministry, your horizon is limited and even your earnings are limited. The people you are supposed to help financially and also to use the profession to assist to deliver them from bondage, oppression and suppression, you are not able to do it. Your potentials are curtailed or limited. That was why I opted out of the ministry to establish my law firm, having done three years.

Of course, during those years, I put my best to the service of government and people of Kwara State and my country. Even then, life outside as a private legal practitioner is also a service to God, humanity and one's nation. I am a kind of person who does not allow service consideration to becloud my own sense of judgment and service. That was why I did not find it difficult taking up the case of the sacked 49 University of Ilorin lecturers. We fought the case from 2001 to the Supreme Court until the final judgment was delivered in 2010.

What were the challenges that came with being the lead counsel of the sacked 49 UNILORIN lecturers?

For the nine years the case lasted in court, the challenges were many. I remember at that time, virtually everybody in the Nigerian society was against the lecturers. Parents, in any case, were not concerned about the genuineness of the cause that these 49 lecturers stood for. Some of the things the lecturers stood for are coming out now—improper funding of the university, nepotism, oppression, corruption and all of that. Those were the things the lecturers were asking questions about at that time, and they were sacked. I remember, sometimes on the eve of each time we were going to court, because many people also intervened to ask the government to call them back as the educational system was also dislocated then, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo would be banging his hands on the table, saying that the lecturers would not go back to the university again. In fact, it was against all odds that we did the case. We were literally riding against the storm. It was tough.

And the lecturers did not even have money to prosecute the case. For nine years they were not paid, except that some of them got menial jobs here and there. You can imagine a whole professor doing menial jobs in some other universities, being paid stipend on hourly basis. But these lecturers stood for integrity and honour, so I did not find it difficult standing with them in that struggle. It was tough. It was turbulent. In fact, it was deadly. It was a suicidal mission. But God helped that we won at the High Court. We lost at the Appeal Court, then eventually, we won at the Supreme Court.

How did you feel when the Supreme Court delivered judgment in your favour?

Of course, I felt a sense of fulfillment. First and foremost, I gave glory to God. It was absolutely God that made it possible. The bible says nothing is impossible for God to do. That was a critical and life example of it. Even though they had no money to pay, God compensated me in another way, because it was in the course of the struggle to secure justice for them that I became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 2007. You cannot put a price tag on the attainment of the highest level of professional excellence in this country. The challenges were there, but God helped us to have victory. Not only that, God also decorated and rewarded me for that exercise.

There was a time you said you never expected the SAN award...

It is not just meeting the criteria in terms of the number of cases you have done or your professional excellence. You know this is Nigeria. There are so many factors coming into play. So many connections to be made and all of that. I knew if they were going to follow the other criteria, oh, why not, we would be eligible. It was very tough anyway. I think I shouldn't go farther than that. If you look at my background—a village boy and son of a farmer and all of that— it is a pedigree. I am not from any of the renowned Nigerians. God has also helped me to create a niche, because if I was lacking in that background, my own children cannot say they are lacking in that regard. God has elevated me, and my own children will take off from where I am and do better than me.

I thank God that He has helped me to get better attainment than my father who is just a cocoa/coffee farmer in the village. He is still alive and I thank God for him as he is always happy and pleased with me. I also thank God for all that he did for the realisation of that rank.

On the contradictory judgments by some courts in the country, it is very bad. Of course, the Chief Justice of Nigeria spoke about it when they were doing the swearing-in for the new Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), and that is the highest authority that can make a pronouncement on it. Everybody knows that something is wrong. And when those kinds of conflicting judgements are coming, they give the impression that the judges who are giving them have forgotten their primary assignments and duties and oath of office as judicial officers. May be they get carried away to get into the political arena or maybe they exert pressure on them. There is no reason for such conflicting judgments. Even Nigerians themselves cause the problems. They file the same matter in Abuja and the same parties will go and file the same case in Port Harcourt, Kano or Maiduguri. Given a normal situation devoid of abnormalities like corruption tendencies and influence peddling, they would be giving contradictory judgments like that. Often times, you find that maybe there is compromise somewhere whereas the justice system must not be compromised. When justice is compromised, the society is completely destroyed. People say that the court is the last hope of the common man. It is no longer the hope of the common man. Even the common man in Nigeria cannot go to court. The gates of the courts are virtually shut against the common man because litigation is very expensive. Even to pay the court fees is a big issue. From what we see now in Nigeria, is it not the big men that are there? You see them in court everyday fighting for their lives. That is why a common man is taken to court for stealing a goat and he is sentenced to 15 years jail term. Look at these high profile politically corrupt people having the money to hire the lawyers and pay expensive fees for the lawyers who do those cases. Our justice system is being manipulated every day to defeat justice. The CJN said so in his address. How lawyers get involved in unethical practices to frustrate cases from being prosecuted.

Conflicting judgments ought not to be happening, but it is happening every time. For followers of history, it happened in the Babangida era when he started his endless transition programme. Since then, it has been on the increase. It ought not to be so if things were normal.