Idowu Sofola, SAN, who turned 80 last Monday, shares his life career and experience as a legal practitioner in this interview with FISAYO FALODI
How do you feel attaining the ripe age of 80?
I thank God for getting me to this stage and also for good health, joy, happiness, my children, my wife, work and everything.
Do you still do some of those things that you used to do 10 years ago?
I still travel. I came back from Europe like a month ago. I go to my hometown Ikene every weekend. I am a member of Ikoyi Club, Island Club and some other clubs but I have not been there for years. But I still go to the Lagos Country Club which is not far from me. I enjoy going to Lagos Club because we have young men there who discuss topical issues in the country. We have views but most of the time I just listen.
Do you still drive?
I used to but presently I don’t. I drove myself recently and I was really afraid of the narrow places under construction. I meandered through the narrow roads bravely. So I can say I still drive but not everyday.
What can you say about the Nigeria of then and the Nigeria of now?
There have been a lot of changes. I was born in Ikene where there was no hospital or maternity centre. Women then would want to deliver and other women had to help them because there was no infrastructure. I was told that my mother gave birth to me unaided because there was nobody around to help her.
I also remember the year we were taking our school certificate examination in secondary school which was around November/December. Before then, an officer would come from the Ministry of Works to interview us for employment. By the time we finished our exams, we already had jobs. Also by the time we were finishing from the university, work was already waiting for us with a car and accommodation. But things have changed now. As a school certificate holder, you can’t even look for job except the job of a houseboy or a messenger.
In my early days in practice, lawyers used to be highly respected. I remember one day I was coming from the court and I passed through Leventis, I saw brand new cars, I parked and went in to look at them. One of the sales people asked me which one I wanted and I told him that I was just looking at them. He asked me to take one and pay later. I drove a car there which was a product of UAC, their own car was 850 pounds but they said that I could trade in my own for 250 pounds and they told me that I could pay the remaining 600 pounds installmentally withing three months. I refused to take the offer but they persuaded me and they collected my car and gave me a new car to take home. When I got home, people were amazed and asked how I could buy a new car with all the austerity around then. I raised the first installment but my elder brother ended up paying the rest because after a while, they kept disturbing me and writing letters until I told them to come and take their car. But my elder brother, Kehinde Sofola, finally bailed me out. What I am trying to bring out is that they allowed me to take the car home without depositing or signing any document. Can they do that to anybody now? No one can be trusted.
I remember another instance when I was coming back from work one day and I stopped at the Central Bank of Nigeria to see a friend and I parked my car without winding up my car windows and my briefcase, wig and gown were in the car. By the time I finished, I met all my things intact. Some years later, I was in the High Court and wanted to use the rest room so I put my wig and gown at the entrance of the toilet. But by the time I came out in two or three minutes, my wig and gown had disappeared. They must have been stolen by a lawyer. It is so surprising how things are changing. Before it was a salary of 60 pounds per month, you were also given a car which cost would be deducted from your salary. I think one pound was deducted from your salary and we also had allowances. We were given accommodation and we enjoyed ourselves because we were comfortable. Everybody was honest then. In the past, people in the civil service dressed moderately, but these days, people tend to flaunt their wealth; they want to publicise their illicit wealth.
What informed your decision to go to school when other children preferred farming or learning one trade or the other to schooling?
My father was the bedrock of my education. He did not go to school but he was very interested in training his children. Initially he sent the male children to school because of the notion then that if you trained the woman, the kitchen would be the end of it and also because it was believed that women would turn out to be reverend’s wives. There were also some men at that time who wanted to take their children to the farm to work for them but my father was not like that. His male children who did not have the advantage of going to school couldn’t go because of the problem he had with their mothers, because each time they quarreled, their mothers would withdraw them from school because they did not appreciate his efforts. Even when my father wanted to send me to school, my mother wanted him to take me to the farm instead because she reasoned that my father was getting old and that if anything happened to him in the farm, I would be the one that would come home and tell them. My father’s reply was that he didn’t want me to curse him for depriving me of education.
What can you say about the standard of education now and then?
In those days, if you read Standard four, you were automatically a teacher and you could work anywhere. For those who went to primary school then, things were really good for them as their intelligence was really high. But now, the standard of education has gone down. It is definitely not what we used to have. Now, a primary four pupil cannot even speak good English, let alone read well. I remember my son, Sina, who has now become a Senior Advocate of Nigeria met one of his classmates who remembered him because he spoke good English in secondary school.
Your mother had twins three times. How come all of them survived despite lack of basic health infrastructure then?
It was simply God’s grace. The last twins she had, the Taiwo came in the morning while the Kehinde came later in the evening. Though there was no medical care then, we all survived and grew up healthily.
You married your wife after 10 years of courtship. Were you not tempted to abort the relationship within those long years of courtship?
Well, we parted at a point. She was in Ibadan while I was in Lagos. When I got back from England, we met and we reconciled.
How did you feel when you were called to the bar?
I felt on top of the world that I became a lawyer.
If you had not studied law, what would you have studied?
I would have studied medicine. I loved medicine. While in school I took great interest in science subjects.
Did your late brother, Kehinde Sofola, influence you to study law?
God knows best. When brother Kehinde became a lawyer, I was with him. He would send me on errands, I watched him and followed him to court and I got carried away. Besides, at that time, all I wanted was to leave the country and go abroad to study. But my brother insisted that I pass my A levels first. But our eldest brother prevailed on me and asked me to go for law. I resigned from the Ministry of Labour where I was working to work in the judiciary.
Was there any time you felt like quitting the law profession for something else like business as a result of peer pressure or frustration?
No way. I was invited to the bench quite a number of times, initially as a magistrate and later as a judge, but I refused.
Your contemporary, Chief Richard Akinjide, combined law with politics, have you ever tried to tow this path?
I have never been interested in politics because I can’t stand the way politics is being practised in Nigeria. There is no patriotism in Nigerian politics, politicians would tell you that they want to come and serve the people especially the downtrodden while most of them are just there to serve themselves. If you say you want to help people and the people say don’t help us, why should that be a problem? On the other hand, if you say you want to come and help people and some other people are standing in your way, then let the people themselves rise up and fight for you and leave everything to God. Some people went into politics as poor men but shortly after becoming politicians, you see them in affluence. We need to question the source of their wealth. I have never belonged to any political group. It has never interested me. I was interested in the Labour Party when I was in England. I was attending their meetings but when I came back and saw the way things were being done, I decided that it was not for me.
Are you saying the way politics was played then and now are the same?
Yes, I and the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo were cousins. In our town then, there were inter-tribal marriages. But some parents dissolved their daughters’ marriages because their husbands did not belong to the same political party with them. It was as bad as that. But in my own case, I was the President of the Ikene Youth Association and we were going to have an event and we invited somebody from Ilisan to which he agreed. When we went to remind him of the event a day before the event, he said he could not come because he would be accused of attending NCNC party meeting.
We were just youths who knew nothing about politics. All I am trying to say is that this bad blood has been there all along. In those days, politicians were called 10 per centers but now they are no longer interested in the 10 per cent. They would take all if you allow them.
As the only African to be inducted into the International Bar Association, how do you feel about this?
I have never been interested in seeking election into any office. It took a lot of pressure from colleagues including Chief T.O Benson for me to join the Nigerian Bar Association before I reluctantly offered to become the secretary. I did a year and withdrew. Up till now, no African has been in IBA. In the first year, you will be studied, you will be recognised in the second year if you are good. It was from there that they suggested to me to put in for Secretary General. I lost in the first election because the person who contested with me was the President of the American Bar Association and I was just the Secretary of the NBA. But I won the second time. It was all over the news both locally and internationally. The reason that no other African has been there is that the good ones have not been allowed to stay enough for them to be understood.
How did you handle cases involving suspected criminals?
One thing about law is this, if you charge a person to court for a criminal offence, it is you the prosecutor that must prove all the ingredients of that crime. If you fail in proving any of the ingredients of the crime, you fail. As lawyers, if we are able to prove nine or 10 ingredients of the case, then we make a no case submission. As lawyers we were not there when the thing happened. It is you the client that would come and say what happened. If at the end of the day the court is convinced that you committed it, then we don’t have anything else to do. But in civil cases, what I have done and I still do is that I listen and hear what you want to say and if I believe that you don’t have a good case, I would tell you so. I don’t charge consultation fees. My conscience would not make me say because I want to get fees I would go ahead and take a case I know is a lost one from the beginning.
What do you do at your leisure time?
I don’t come out of my room until 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning. I sleep well, on working days, I don’t have time to sleep in the afternoon, but I don’t do less than eight hours of sleep in the night regularly. If for any reason I don’t sleep well, I make sure I make up for it during the week. My doctor is always astounded with my health because each time he tests me, he does not find any hypertension and the likes. I gave up alcohol sometimes ago. I went out one night and had drinks and the following day, I could not eat. It took me three days before I became okay and ever since then I stopped.
What types of drinks did you like when you were still drinking?
Then drink was drink, but Stout was my favourite.
Religion?
I am not religious, but I try to be a good Muslim. I try to do my best. I remember sometimes ago, the Chief Imam was preaching about alcohol, saying it was not good and that it is bitter. I later on asked him how he knew it was bitter if he had not tasted it.
I used to be a heavy smoker. I was smoking more than 20 sticks a day. I finally decided to change when one day I finished 20 sticks before noon and I was so desperate for more and I asked a stranger if he had a cigarette to which he obliged. It then dawned on me that I needed to quit. It got so bad that people started complaining that my clothes were smelling and even my office too. I told my wife and friends that I needed to stop and somehow I found the will to stop when one day I really felt like smoking and I bought a stick from a nearby vendor. The cigarette made me cough so much that I lost my voice. That was how I stopped smoking in 1980 and I have never smoked since then.
What pieces of advice do you have for upcoming lawyers?
One thing I always say to them is to have character. That is why some of these universities go on strike. They lock up their vice-chancellors and do all sorts of things. You dare not do that in law school. I always stress the need for character regardless of your qualification because qualification does not admit you to the bar. You need hard work, good character, honesty and also when you start work, you have to understand that you need to start under someone, especially experienced and senior colleagues.
You need to work hard so that people will see you. You should take the early stage of your practice as an extension of your law school. Forget about money. Money would come later. As old as I am, if there is need for me to come to work on weekends, I do that. Since the beginning of my practice in 1962, I have never put a sign in front of my house to advertise myself. I don’t put my address on any letterhead or any card.
It is a common thing for people to see their children progressing, how many SANS has your chamber produced?
Five, including my son. My son did not take working in his father’s chambers lightly. When he is in the office, he calls me Oga, but at home I am Daddy. He is doing well and I am happy he is a SAN. I have handed over everything to him though I am still the de facto head.
Can you recollect a specific thing you did for your mother to appreciate her for not losing hope in you, especially when she was carrying you as a child from one place to the other for the purpose of finding solution to your ear defect?
One thing that I can remember is that her elder brother called me and said I should be giving her something every month. Though I did not have much due to the rough start, I managed to scrape two pounds together in 1964. When she died I cried bitterly because I did not have the opportunity to increase the amount. I felt her death; I felt the moment she passed on. I was in England then. I regretted deeply not increasing that amount. That is why I tell people to do their best for their loved ones while they are still alive no matter how little.
How would you feel if Nigerian students should ask you to will your library to them for the advancement of legal study?
Unfortunately the library does not belong to me anymore; it belongs to Sina, my son who is now a SAN. So, there is no way I could will what does not belong to me.
How did you feel when your wife first told you that she was pregnant for you as a young man then?
I felt great; great in the sense that we had waited for years expecting the pregnancy, but when it eventually came, I felt on top of the world.
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