Adekunle Oyesanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and the Managing Partner in Chief Bankole Oki and Oyesanya Chambers, shares his experiences with ADEOLA BALOGUN
Congratulations on your appointment as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. What does the title mean to you?
It is the climax of my career, which spans 26 years. I was called to the bar in 1987. Before then, I studied English at the University of Lagos. I graduated in 1981 and served in Cross River State. There was no Akwa Ibom State at the time and I served somewhere around Uyo. That was between 1981 and 1982. Later, I went back to the university to study law.
Why?
First, my late father, who died in January this year, was my major motivator. He was an accomplished management consultant and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Administrators. After his programme in England, he started law. He had always wanted to be a lawyer, but due to some circumstances, he could not continue and he had to come back home. It was his burning ambition to study law, but he couldn’t realise the dream. He said to me once, ‘Look, if you are able to read law, you would have fulfilled a part of my own ambition and I want you to have a profession and I think you can do it.’ I was just 18 years old when I entered the university. By the time I graduated, I was 21. I tried to switch over to law when I was in the university, but I couldn’t do so because of my late uncle, Mr. Abayomi Sogbesan, SAN, who died 22 years ago. He was the head of Chief Awolowo’s law chambers on Park Lane in Apapa, Lagos. He advised me to get a degree in English first before studying law, saying that it would be to my advantage. I was young at that time and I didn’t quite like the advice. But he told me that he would ensure that I didn’t get admitted into law at the university. He was very influential in the university in those days because he was a lecturer before he started legal practice. So he knew all the lecturers in UNILAG. He made sure that I didn’t switch over to law till I had obtained a degree in English. Although I didn’t like it initially, in the end I discovered that he was right. My knowledge of English came handy when I was studying law. I read law at the University of Ibadan. That was when UI started its postgraduate programme. So, 98 per cent of us were graduates. In fact, some people had master’s degrees in our class. It was a tough class, but my English was quite helpful. I would say that I studied law partly for the sake of my father and partly to fulfil a childhood dream. When my father was working with the then Ministry of Communication at the Race Course, I used to work with him during the holidays there. Occasionally, I would walk to the High Court and observe the proceedings. In those days, I enjoyed seeing lawyers in their robes. More important, I am not happy that my father didn’t live long enough to witness my appointment as a senior advocate of Nigeria.
If you look back now, would you say it has been easy practising as a lawyer?
I would say that I have been lucky in my professional life. One, I accepted my uncle’s advice to finish studying English before reading law, though I didn’t like it. As a result, when I completed the mandatory National Youth Service, he assisted me to get into the Faculty of Law at UI. Then, when I finished my law programme in 1987, he admitted me into his chambers. So, I started legal practice in a very good law chambers. Any senior lawyer in this country will remember Mr. Sogbesan as a brilliant and fantastic lawyer with a very big firm. There were 16 of us in the chambers and I was number 16. The place bristled with intellectualism and we were going to court every day. In a very short time, I learnt a lot as a young lawyer. Unfortunately, when he died in August 1990, we continued for another year before things fell apart and I had to leave. I went on to head a law firm set up by two gentlemen, Mr. Lai Mohammed, who is the publicity secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria and Mr. Yomi Edu, a former minister. Both lawyers were active in politics in those days of the Social Democratic Party and the National Republican Convention. They wanted somebody to run the law firm for them and the way they conducted the interview was funny. They asked some senior lawyers in the industry about any young lawyer who could run their chambers and some people mentioned a few names to them. Later, I learnt that from the survey they conducted, more people mentioned my name. I just got a phone call from Mohammed, whom I had never met before. He said that somebody gave him my name and that he would like me to work for them. That was it. I did that job for about two or three years and I left to set up my own chambers in 1994. I shared it with a friend, Mr. Olanrewaju Oshinaike. Both of us were called to the bar around the same time. I was there till 1997 when again, by a stroke of luck, Chief Bankole Oki, who was then the second most senior lawyer in Nigeria after Chief Rotimi Williams, saw some process that I filed in court for his son-in-law and liked it. After he found out who filed the process, he sent for me and I was a bit afraid because I thought I had done something wrong. Then I was just about six years old in legal practice. When I went to meet him, he said, ‘Young man, did you draft that paper?’ I said yes. He asked again, ‘Where did you learn to practice?’ When I told him I started with Mr. Sogbesan, he said, ‘Oh, now I see where you got it from. At your age in practice, that was good.’ I was very happy and Baba took a liking to me and he said I should always come to him. Then, he used to give me some jobs to do for him and he would discuss with me. We did that for some years and then, in 1997, he suggested that we merge our law firms. At that time Baba had clocked about 50 years at the bar and I was barely 10. I was quite nervous. I told him I would pray about it and see him later. After doing that and didn’t see any negative thing about the proposal, I came to Baba and told him I would consider the partnership. He told me to go and draw the partnership agreement, which he signed without even reading it. He had so much confidence in me and he treated me like his own son. Indeed, he was like a father to me and this is why I miss him a lot. But I had indicated on the document that I would be the managing partner. He accepted, saying that he was already an old man. But we admitted his daughter, Sade, with whom we started the law chamber named Bank Oki, Oyesanya and Co. That was in 1997. Baba died two years ago. Sade and I have continued to keep the chamber going. That is the story of my professional career. I have been lucky to meet the big names in the industry and somehow, I have been able to build a name for myself in the process.
Having gained so much experience as a lawyer, would say that your appointment as a SAN was long overdue?
Well, I am a Christian and the Bible says promotion comes neither from the east nor from the west, but from above. So, I will not say it was overdue because everything that is due to you is from God. At a point, I used to be embarrassed each time I went to court. Some people said I should have been a SAN before now. But it is a rigorous process. I always believe that promotion comes from God and at the time it will come, it will surely come. There are good lawyers who are not SANs, no doubt.
When some lawyers advocated the abolition of SAN, what was your opinion at the time?
I didn’t quite agree with them. They had their grievances and some of them were quite genuine. They said that advocates were given too many privileges over other lawyers. I was outside the inner bar for many years and I experienced what their complaint was all about. For example, on a typical day at the Court of Appeal, if there are 20 cases and your case is number 16 and there are three or four SANs who are also in court with you, the judges will mention their cases first and they may be on that for the next four or five hours. The judges are human, too, and by the time they have worked for some time, they would decide to rest for the day. Naturally, a senior lawyer that arrived in court earlier than the SAN would feel bad about it. That is part of the complaints. But you don’t throw away the baby with the bathwater. Although they were complaining about the selection process, you will notice that the Privileges Committee has done a lot of work to make the selection process more credible. I don’t agree that we should do away with it because this is a profession and there ought to be a certain level that one should aspire to attain. As a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, one is supposed to be a leader at the bar and be able to add value to the profession. And if we don’t have people like that who those coming up can look up to, if we are not careful, the profession may die. So, I don’t believe we should cancel it.
As a lawyer outside the inner bar, have you ever defeated a SAN in court?
Of course, yes. The fact that you are a SAN does not necessarily mean you cannot lose a case. It does not always follow that as a SAN, you must win all your cases. Yes, as a SAN, you have privileges that the judge would defer to, but a very good lawyer may beat you in court. There is this belief that the title SAN is a magical word. This is not true. As SANs, we must be careful not to throw our weight around and create an impression that we are demi-gods. The law is the best profession that one can belong to. My late principal, the late Chief Bankole Oki (I called him my father) used to tell me that England and America were built by lawyers. Go and do a research. You will find out that almost all the presidents in both countries were lawyers. If we apply ourselves as lawyers, this country will probably not be like this. Law is a profession that allows you to know something about everything and everything about something. It is a profession that makes you to see real life situations. It is a very interesting profession. If a lawyer goes into politics, there will be a marked difference because he knows little about everything.
Is it true that in order to become a successful lawyer in Nigeria, one must belong to some societies to acquire power?
I think that was in the olden days when people held lawyers in awe. Then, there were not many lawyers around and they were making a lot of money. People used to think lawyers were not ordinary men. They believed that lawyers had to belong to one society or the other for power. I think that thinking is changing now. That is not to say that people have not come and suggested things to me. My Christian background has helped me to resist such suggestions. I was brought up to know that all power belongs to God and that anything happens to you when God allows it. Otherwise, nobody has power over you. I was brought up to know that without belonging to any society, I have direct access to God if I want to reach out to him.
Why do lawyers often become active in politics?
Most lawyers have the natural inclination to go into politics because by their training, they get worried by what goes on around them. So when they go into politics, they want to add value to the society; not because they want to seek personal aggrandisement. As lawyers, we are always worried that things are not done according to the rule of law. In America, they say that government must be according to law, not according to men. That is the golden rule and that is where they are where they are.
Sometimes, judges accuse lawyers of contributing to the rot in the society when they seek unnecessary adjournments in courts. Why seek adjournment when it is not necessary?
In every profession, there will always be lazy people or those who want to get things done through the back-door or what we call the Nigerian factor. The Nigeria Bar Association is trying to ensure that lawyers do their jobs without slowing down the progress of law. Yes, it is true that some lawyers who don’t prepare for their cases seek adjournment, but gradually we are getting there. I am training some lawyers and others work with me. I tell them that I am very angry when anybody goes to court to seek adjournment simply because he did not do what he was supposed to do on time. In Lagos now, there is a deadline for the filing of papers and payment of penalties. I tell my lawyers that if they default, I will use their money to defray the costs. It is also a reflection of what is happening in the larger society where standards are falling everyday in almost every sphere of life.
Nowadays governors and government officials indicted of corruption easily hire SANs to defend them, even when they are out of office. Is this not tantamount to breeding corruption?
We have a problem in Nigeria and we have to be very careful about the way we go about it. The constitution says that a man is presumed innocent until he is found guilty. In this country, once it is said that somebody has done something, it is still an allegation. But some people will start condemning that person. It happens all the time in this country and it is very sad. Unless the court has pronounced the person as guilty, as lawyers we have a duty to defend the person. It is not because we are senior advocates. If a client tells me the fact of his case, I will tell him that he does not have a case. Even if we go to court, it is the truth. Thankfully, there is plea bargaining. I will not begin to manufacture lies to defend lies because of money. I will advise the client to let us negotiate instead of going through the whole gamut and still be found guilty. Sometimes, the enemies of a public official may make allegations because they want to destroy him. Lawyers have the duty to defend him. We have a saying that the law would prefer that a thousand guilty people go scot free than to allow one innocent man to go to jail.
Why do these people prefer senior advocates, does it mean that other lawyers are not good enough?
It is their choice, just as everybody has a counsel of their choice. If they have the means to pay senior advocates, why should anybody quarrel with that? If they cannot pay senior lawyers, are there others that are quite good? Until recently, Femi Falana was a very good lawyer who fought like a lion, especially when it concerns issues of human rights.
Do you choose your briefs?
Of course, I choose my briefs. For example, if the EFCC accuses anyone of stealing N10bn while in office, I will ask him why he stole. Give me the facts of the case. If I find out that he actually stole, I would ask him where he has kept the money. Let us use some of the money for plea bargaining. I will not begin to manufacture lies because I want to defend you, no. But if such a person insists that I should go ahead and defend lies at all cost, I will say, sorry, I don’t know how I can defend this case, especially when I know there is no case. I won’t touch the case, even if he has all the money in the world to pay me. I will tell clients the strengths of their cases so that they know what to expect at the end of the day.
How has your job as a lawyer shaped your life?
Wherever I find myself, whether in church or anywhere, people tend to treat me with respect. They look at me as a natural leader. They want to hear my voice and what I think about an issue. I really don’t have a social life. But I am a choir master and I compose music, having been a member of the choir at the age of seven. My late father was a choirmaster for over 40 years. I write music and I relax that way. I attend some social functions, but most of my time is taken up by my work or church music.
Does it mean that you won’t consider getting involved in politics?
The way politics is practised here does not suit me. For me, politics is no longer attractive because of the way it is structured. I would have loved to be in the Senate where they make laws, but I don’t see myself surviving in any of the political structures. I don’t have the nerves for what is going on here. That is not to say that I cannot take up a political appointment, especially where I can contribute my quota to the development of the society.
Do you think that the office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice should be split into two?
It is very dangerous. First, being a professional will help the attorney-general to maintain the office and function very well. If the office is split and the other aspect is manned by a politician who is not a lawyer, it is very dangerous because before you know it, they will start fighting.
Did you get married to a fellow lawyer?
No, my wife studied history at the University of Lagos. I will tell you that I have never regretted marrying her. She is very understanding and has been a pillar in the home. She has never given me any problem and because of that, I have been able to concentrate. She is God-fearing and supporting. I believe God has been kind to me in marrying her. We have been married for about 22 years now and there has never been any problem
Has any of your children shown interest in the legal profession?
Incidentally, two out of my three children are involved with the legal profession. My first daughter is rounding off her law programme in the UK and the second is about to start his programme. I did not influence their choice of career. I will say God has been kind to me.
Do you plan to retire soon?
It is difficult to say that because law is different from other professions. You can carry on, notwithstanding the age. You may decide to stop attending court proceedings as you become older. Maybe, when one gets to that stage, one may be able to decide.