By Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja,
Executive Director,
Nigerian Law Society (NLS)

“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of *dignity and discipline* .We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence”
-Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”,August 28, 1963.

The leadership (National Officers) and administrative staff (Executive Director, and ICT and Secretary) of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) have conducted themselves with utmost “dignity and discipline”.

The NLS “dignity and discipline” in the face of unrelenting attacks and illegal provocation by the Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is something that students of Masters of Business Administration (MBA) are supposed to use as a case study of exemplary leadership and team work.

From the date December 2023, when a Federal High Court in Abuja gave a favourable judgment in favour of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) ordering the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to register the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) in compliance with Section 40 of the Nigerian Constitution, 1999 (as altered), it has been one attack after another.

The Registrar-General of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), who is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and who was supposed to apply legally approved methods, refused and resorted to extra-judicial methods such as publishing DEFAMATORY comments against the NLS on both social media and traditional newspapers.

In accordance with it’s principled “dignity and discipline”, the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) refused to respond in kind by engagingin a social media war. Instead, it submitted it’s complaints to the courts of law which were already handling the appeal filed by the same CAC and the NBA.

When these social media methods did not achieve the desired results, the Registrar-General of the CAC, then resorted to writing petitions against the NLS to law enforcement agencies such as the Department of State Security Services (DSS), Police and even the Nigerian Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) requesting them to shut down the website and other operations of the NLS. NITDA is on record as refusing by telling the Registrar-General of the CAC that only a court of law can give an Order to that effect.

With their characteristic “dignity and discipline” the Executive Director of the NLS personally went to the DSS and Nigerian Police to respond by Submission of both written and oral evidence, to all these petitions by the Registrar-General of CAC.

Even though some members of the National Officers of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) also have connections within the Nigerian Police and other law enforcement agencies, and could have “unleashed” such law enforcement agencies upon the Registrar-General of the CAC, the NLS resisted the temptation of returning “fire-for-fire”. Instead they chose the path of “dignity and discipline” by reporting all these harassment to the courts of law and the National Human Rights Commission by a visit to the Executive Secretary.

They also paid a visit to the Hon. Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice to formally notify him of the illegal actions of the Registrar-General of the CAC.

All these foregoing, points to the maturity of the National officers of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS). This maturity cannot be attributed to only one person alone namely Mela Nunge, SAN, who currently serves as the President of the NLS. It is a result of the collective maturity displayed by all the National Officers of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) who came on board sometime in July 2024.

It is not as if everything is smooth sailing or there are no challenges within the Nigerian Law Society (NLS), however they have managed to manage their egos and internal revolts internally without bringing it into the public domain.

To the contrary, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is recently embroiled in an internal revolt at it’s Rivers State branches that has now spilled into the public domain.

The crux of the matter is that the eight Chairpersons of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) branches wrote a letter to disassociate themselves from the decision of the headquarters of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) whom they accused of not caring them along as Local Organising Committee (LOC) in the forthcoming NBA national conference due to hold in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

In opposition to the letter written by the said 8 Chairpersons of the NBA in Rivers State, another group of lawyers have written a disclaimer that the said 8 Chairpersons of the NBA branches of Rivers State do not represent the views of the majority of lawyers in Rivers State.

This recent crisis speaks volumes, it shows that the leadership style of the NBA is bereft of democratic ideals and lacks both the “dignity and discipline” and amicable dispute resolution methods that are the now the characteristic trademarks of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS).

Roll over NBA, welcome the Nigerian Law Society (NLS).

Perhaps it is time that the national officers, EXCO members of the headquarters of the NBA and all it’s chairpersons from the 218 NBA branches should attend a seminar on leadership style to be delivered by the national officers of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS)!!!!

By Tunde Olusunle

Nigeria’s South East geopolitical zone has courted global notoriety for the multipronged crimes and criminality which has festered over the years. In several public engagements, I’ve had reason to comment on this lingering malaise which never seems to abate. First I wrote “Gunsmoke from the East,” published in The Guardian of August 9, 2021. I equally engaged the subject in “Unknown Gunmen, November 6 and the Epidemic of Bloodletting,” which appeared in The Cable of October 6, 2021. The needless hemorrhaging of precious, oftentimes innocent, definitively irreplaceable lives in the mould of day-to-day Nigerians, technocrats, businessmen, security personnel, cannot be more discomforting. “Travel advisories” emanating from the diplomatic outposts of several countries with nationals in Nigeria, typically classify the South East as a “no-go zone.” Reports from a few friends who spent the last yuletide in their eastern homeland, however, allude to a measure of sanity in the region within the season. Kidnappings were scantily recorded, killings barely reported. Let’s see how the minimisation of blood flow within the season, is sustained for our collective good.

As tribute to the innovations they were bringing to bear on governance and administration in their respective addresses, I had reason to salute governors Alex Otti of Abia, Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra and Mohammed Bago of Niger State in an overview I did last year. The piece was titled “Plaudits for Otti, Soludo and Bago,” and published in Thisday of May 24, 2024. I acknowledged Otti’s frugality and clear-headed focus on multisectoral development, as against the dour, colourless stint of Okezie Ikpeazu his predecessor. Soludo won me over for his determination to encourage and further deepen the development of homegrown competencies and products, while prosecuting an infrastructural makeover of Anambra State. Bago’s recourse to the conscientious development of agriculture in his infinitely blessed state, for local sufficiency and the economic sustenance of his constituents, remains remarkable.

Soludo and Otti are in the news again playing the roles of pan-Nigerian statesmen and helping to paper up the cracks of the edifice of our togetherness as a nation. The percentage parochialism which Nigeria witnessed during the ruinous eight years of Muhammadu Buhari at the helm of national politics and governance, was only comparable to the divisive rhetoric of Nigeria’s pre-civil war era. Buhari exhumed the fossils of our latent ethno-religious fault lines, intentionally imposing a Fulani hegemony on Nigeria to the consternation of the mass of his Nigerian constituents. He said in the early days of his administration, that sections of the country which gave him five percent of their votes, would reap similar measures in political appointments and project appropriation. Buhari made good his threat to a large extent. He punitively appointed Igbos to marginal ministries like Labour and Employment, as well as Science and Technology!

Early last year, Soludo appointed Joachim Achor and Adebayo Ojeyinka as Permanent Secretaries in the Civil Service of Anambra State. Achor is from Abia State, while Ojeyinka hails from Osun State. Ojeyinka by the way was engaged in the Anambra bureaucracy by the third republic governor of the state, Chukwuemeka Ezeife. Okwadike as Ezeife was famously adulated, led the state between January 1992 and November 1993. Ojeyinka grew through the ranks in the Anambra system, logging over three decades before his elevation last year. The process which produced him was merit-based. It included a computer-based examination, an engaging search process including security verification, and a one-on-one interaction with the governor.

Southwards from Awka, the Anambra State capital, Alex Otti of Abia State last week appointed Benson Ojeikere as the new Head of Service of the Abia State Civil Service. A little over 30 years ago, Ojeikere underwent the National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC) in Abia State. He emerged the best participant in the mandatory one-year exercise and was granted automatic employment by the incumbent regime at the time. It is a measure of his qualities and the implicit confidence reposed in him by successive administrations in Abia State, that Ojeikere’s brief before his recent elevation was that of Permanent Secretary in Government House, Umuahia. At Ojeikere’s inauguration, governor Otti re-echoed the sentiments of Soludo, his counterpart in Anambra State. He spoke of the imperative to “build a system where meritocracy triumphs over mediocrity, where the best and brightest can rise to the top, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.”

This same pan-Nigerian vision, has successively informed the broad-arms embrace of Nigerians from all over into the scheme of governance in Lagos State, for example, over the years. Lai Mohammed, (Information Minister under the Buhari regime) from Kwara, and Rauf Aregbesola, (former Governor of Osun State and immediate past Minister for Interior), from Osun, savoured national political limelight under the Bola Tinubu governorship in Lagos, between 1999 and 2007. Dele Alake, (incumbent Minister for Solid Minerals); Opeyemi Bamidele, (Leader of the Senate), both from Ekiti, and Biodun Faleke, (a ranking member of the House of Representatives) who is primarily from Kogi State, are all alumni of the Tinubu “Lagos School.” Indeed, between Tinubu’s addresses as Governor of Lagos State and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), his media advisers, Segun Ayobolu, Sunday Dare and Tunde Rahman, hail from Kogi, Oyo and Osun states.

If the sociocultural backgrounds of the above listed is unanimously Yoruba, if they bear etymological consangiunity with Lagos State, how about Ben Akabueze, who was commissioner for budget and economic planning under Tinubu in 2007 and thereafter Director-General of the Budget Office under Buhari? How about Joe Igbokwe, a serving Special Adviser to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos? As Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole took along with him from the labour movement, Olaitan Oyerinde who served as his Principal Secretary. Sadl, Oyerinde was assassinated in May 2012, a matter which remains unresolved like most other murder cases in our country. All through his years as Governor of Bayelsa State, Henry Seriake Dickson had with him Francis Otah Agbo from Idomaland in Benue State, as one of his closest aides and confidants. Dickson indeed supported Agbo to vie for a seat in the House of Representatives which he won.

Between 1999 and 2007, Sheddy Ozoene from Enugu State was Chief Press Secretary to the Governor of Delta State, James Ibori. Back in 2003, Festus Adebayo from Ondo State, was Special Assistant, (Public Policy Analysis) to the Enugu State Governor at the time, Chimaroke Nnamani. As governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El Rufai had Adebisi Lawal, from Ogun State and Muyiwa Adekeye, from Kwara State as his advisers on Investment, and Media, respectively. Fausat Adebola Ibikunle, also from the Yoruba country was his Commissioner for Housing and Urban Development. Veteran journalist Bala Dan-Abu from Kogi State was spokesperson for the immediate past governor of Taraba State, Darius Ishaku. The foregoing discourse is apposite because it attests to the feasibility and sustainability of authentic integration in our socioculturally divergent polity, if intentionally prosecuted.

Except deployed for political mischief, except triggered by hard-line extremists, ethnicity and religion are barely divisive elements in our coexistence as a people. This reminds of a section of the lyrics of the song Me and You No Be Enemy, with the refrain “We Suppose to Be Family,” by Lagbaja, a post-Fela Anikulapo-Kuti Afrobeats legend. The song was released over two decades ago. Lagbaja’s treatise contends that if the colour of our tongues is the sole measure of our individual origins and backgrounds, humans from all over the world could all have evolved from the same biological roots! All tongues are red, Lagbaja reaffirms, while asking rhetorically what the distinguishing features would be, between a Nigerian and a Ghanaian; an Indian and a Pakistani; an English man and an American, if they stood in a file line.

By acknowledging and rewarding competence and merit as against sectionalism and parochialism in statecraft, Soludo and Otti have proven to us that we can together build a genuinely egalitarian country. We can draw from the diverse pool of human resource abundance available to us as a country to propel this country to greater heights at every level. Six Nigerians: Azeez Butali, Ijeoma Opara, Oluwatomi Akindele, Eno Ebong, Oluwasanmi Koyejo and Abidemi Ajiboye, medics, engineers and professors, were recently honoured by outgoing American President, Joe Biden. They received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, (PECASE). Their country of primary origin was not a parameter for measuring their intellectual and professional competencies, even as Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, once caustically categorised Nigeria as a shit hole country.

The colours of the skins and eyes of the Nigerians so acknowledged by Biden didn’t matter. The quality and value with they continue to avail to humanity was uppermost. Food for thought for leaders intent on imprinting landmarks on the aisles of time.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja

By Tunde Olusunle

A studious interrogation of his educational background, offers some insight into the experiences which crystallised into his latter day exertions as a left-inclined personality and public figure. He studied Economics at the University of Port Harcourt, posting a second class upper performance with honours. He encountered acclaimed radical theorists, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and so on in the course of his studies and research. He was mentored by the famous, radical political economist, Bade Onimode, Emeritus Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, who sadly passed at 57 in 2001, among a cream of other influencers. He would thereafter pursue a career in journalism, opting for the labour beat in a vocation which was undergoing very rapid professionalisation at the time.

The Kano-based *Triumph* newspapers was his first address back in 1981. It was a milieu during which almost each of Nigeria’s 19 states owned print and electronic media organisations. He thereafter underwent the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC), at the upcoming *Concord* newspapers in Lagos, between 1985 and 1986. He was engaged upon the completion of his NYSC, at the national headquarters of the Nigeria Labour Congress, (NLC). He thus became one of the country’s first university graduates employed by the nation’s foremost umbrella association for Nigerian workers. The gravitation of young technocrats like him was thenceforth going to energise the labour superstructure and impact public perception of the labour movement in Nigeria.

Born in Ijagbo in Kwara State, January 8, 1961, Issa Obalowu Aremu’s life is as cosmopolitan as can be imagined. His untiring quest for knowledge has taken him around and about his home country and beyond. He has traversed educational institutions in Ilorin, Kwara State; Zaria, Kaduna State; Port Harcourt, Rivers State; Jos, Plateau State; Maryland in the United States of America, (USA), and The Hague in the Netherlands. The journey of his life has been populated by significant milestones all the way. He headed the Economics and Research Department of the NLC headquarters domiciled in Lagos at the time, between 1987 and 1989. He was on the Senior Executive Course 27 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, (NIPSS), graduating in 2005. He would later serve for two terms, 2013 to 2017, as Secretary-General of the Alumni Association of NIPSS, known by the acronym *AANI.* He was Vice President of the NLC for two terms, stretching from 2007 to 2015.

While on this assignment, Issa Aremu was tapped as a Delegate of the Organised Labour, to the National Conference convened by Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014, and was Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Civil Society, Labour, Youths and Sports. Aremu previously described the Conference as “wasteful and diversionary.” He canvassed good governance, in place of talkshops. His perspective was different, however, after his participation in the Conference. He confirmed in a television interview that about 500 recommendations were proposed by the assembly to issues at the heart of the nation, which received concurrence by consensus. He alluded to labour-related issues such as workers’ remuneration; pensions and gratuities; hours of work and maternity duration as some of the issues canvassed by the organised Labour.

On May 18, 2021, Issa Aremu widely known in labour and trade union circles as *Comrade,* was appointed Director-General of the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies, (MINILS), by the immediate past President, Muhammadu Buhari. The institute was established by the administration of Nigeria’s Second Republic President, Usman Shehu Shagari, in 1983. It has been suggested that Senate Leader in that era, Olusola Saraki, was largely influential in siting the institution in Kwara State, the charismatic politician’s home state. This tallies with the latter day disposition of the older Saraki’s son, Bukola, governor of Kwara State between 2003 to 2011, who substantially assisted with the construction and modernisation of structures in the institute. MINILS is supervised by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment. It is headquartered in Ilorin, Kwara State, with a number of regional outposts in select states across the country. Aremu thus became the very first core, career trade and labour practitioner to be appointed to the position.

Aremu has successfully undertaken the renovation of the training block of the institution and installed solar facilities for the supply of energy to the directorate, administrative, training and education blocks, as well as the resource centre of the organisation. From time to time, he rehabilitates the dirt access from the Ajasse-Ipo road approach, to the institution’s main gate, to ensure motorability. The said road is long overdue for asphalt or concrete tarring, both for the convenience of commuters and the health of other users, presently condemned to dangerous, daily dust inhalation. The parent ministry of the institute is reportedly collaborating with its parastatal, MINILS, and the Government of Kwara State to make the perimeters and precincts of the institution much better. Former Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his successor, Abdulfatah Ahmed, were very supportive of the physical development of the institute. They built accommodation facilities and resource infrastructures to augment the evolution of MINILS.

There is, reportedly, continuing tripartite dialogue about how best to relocate illegal vendors and hawkers lining the major approach entrance into MINILS, as soon as feasible. Parties in the talks are said to include the Kwara State Government; the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, and MINILS. The tertiary institution is reputed to be the only such establishment, solely devoted to capacity building for labour and trade unionists on the west coast of Africa. It is imperative to impose more sightly aesthetics around and about the 42 year old institute, both for Nigerian nationals, and potential foreign subscribers and partners. The sprawling beauty into which the older University of Ilorin within the same city as MINILS has evolved into, has become a veritable inspiration for other tertiary institutions in Kwara State. MINILS under Aremu’s leadership last year, successfully hosted the *10th National Labour Summit* in its Ilorin facility.

Unknown to many, Issa Aremu is indeed a public scholar with many published works to his credit. These include: *The Crises of Pricing Petroleum Products in Nigeria,* and *The National Union of Textiles, Garments and Tailors,* both published in 2001. In 2015, four anthologies of Aremu’s essays were released namely: *Reflections on Friends, Comrades and Heroes;* *Reflections on Industry and Economy;* *Reflections on Labour and Trade Unions* and *Reflections on Africa and Global Affairs.* The reputable *Malthouse Press,* in Ibadan did professional justice to the aesthetics of the books. Creative alternative titles, however, should have been deployed to distinguish all four publications which titles begin with the word “Reflections.” Synonyms like “Thoughts,” “Musings,” even “Thinkings” are credible possibilities.

Aremu who still finds time to contribute to issues on the front burner of public discourse, from time to time, had previously functioned as Member, National Executive Council of the NLC and General Secretary, National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, (NUTGTWN). He was Board Member, National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, (NSIWC), and Vice President, Industrial Global Union, representing over 50 million members globally. Apart from NIPSS, Aremu was at the Institute for Social Studies, (ISS), The Hague, Netherlands from 1990 to 1991, from where he obtained a masters degree in Labour and Development. He was also at the George Meany Centre of the National Labour College in the United States, in 2003.

Issa Aremu wears an almost permanent smile on his face. He attempted the governorship of Kwara State in 2019, on the platform of the Labour Party, (LP). His endeavours as a Comrade over time have been acknowledged at various times. A Member of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, (NIPSS), since 2005, the *mni* appellation is affixed to his name. He also received the Nigerian Productivity Order of Merit, (NPOM) in 2014, and the *Gold Prize Public Service Award* in 2024. He enjoys debate and cycling. He is happily married to Khadijat Aremu and blessed with children. His family has attuned to his lifelong career on the frontlines of trade and labour unionism.

*Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja*