Remembering Professor Wale Omole – A scholar of distinction and great repute — by Mutalubi Adebayo

I appeared as a Junior Counsel to the erudite and cerebral Distinguished Learned Silk, Chief Akin Olujinmi, CON, SAN during the Commission of Inquiry set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR to investigate the gruesome murder of OAU Students by some Cultists in the early year of OBJ regime.

The law firm of Olujinmi & Akeredolu represented OAU before the Commission while Mr. Yinka Fusika( now SAN) and his team represented the Students Union of OAU. Mallam Yusuf Ali, SAN, Prof. Jadesola Akande, Prof. Okonkwo, SAN( of Okonkwo & Nash), Mr. Ray Ekpu were members of the Commission which has Justice Nwazonta(???) as its Chairman. Olujinmi & Akeredolu engaged Chief Adeboye Adejumo, SAN to appear for Prof. Wale Omole before the Commission. Prince now Oba Adeloye presented the memo on behalf of the family of the slained Africa before the Commission .

We were in OAU for about 4months and were lodged at the VIP Lodge. The Commission sat at the Amphitheater and also sat at Abuja and also took evidence at Ilesa Prison , now Correctional Centre.

Professor Omole and one Professor Ajibola, then a DVC Administration were at their best while giving evidence and also when they were being cross-examined. There are Professors and there are Professors, Professors Wale Omole and Ajibola are both distinguished scholars and they left nobody in doubt that they truly earned and deserved their academic laurels and honours. Co-incidentally, both Professors Wale Omole and Ajibola are Ladies’s Men as they are very handsome.

The Commission did a very thorough job , while Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN as usual was in his top best form and all and sundry attested to his being super Advocate of great repute. Chief Adeboye Adejumo, SAN who also appeared with his junior, Mr. M. A. Adegbola, now a Judge of the Oyo State High Court and one of the upright Judges in the State and in the country were also very fantastic before the Commission.

I also accompanied Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN to attend the Church’s thanksgiving service organised by Professor Wale Omole at Ilesa, Osun State, to appreciate God and celebrate his eventual clearance and and being absolved of the allegations that the OAU Students Union tried to rope him in.

Later, we were at his palatial mansion for a lavish reception where all varieties of foods , wines, spirits and drinks were in abundance. However, Chief Olujinmi, SAN didn’t allow me to have a taste of any food that day , except a bottle of water that I drank, by default.

Apparently, Chief took his pound of flesh on me for sleeping off in his V-Boot car and for failing to ask the driver to branch to Ilesa when we reached the junction. I never knew that Chief too had dozed off and we were almost at the Osun State Boundary with Ondo State before the learned Chief woke up and realised that I had totally slept off. Chief asked the Driver to turn back and when we eventually got to the Church at Ilesa, the Church was at the final stage of the service where they used to collect money/ offering from the congregants. I could see that day that Chief was very annoyed and displeased with me. Till we returned to Ibadan , he didn’t have any discussion with me , even when I tried to raise some issues of interest, he ignored me totally throughout the trip.

Am not always happy when most of our new entrants into the Legal profession in recent years have adopted unwholesome practices of not doing pulpilage in renown law firms or top rated law firms like Olujinmi & Akeredolu and or in any law firm at all. Most of them rushed to set up their own practice or law firms without garnering the much needed experience(s) before doing so. This is an anomaly because what a Junior will learn in those law firms can never ever be obtained in the four walls of classrooms, even if one pursues academic studies up to professorial level in Law.

I once told a gathering of Legal Practitioners at an international forum and I have proudly repeated it at various other fora that if a Junior Counsel merely followed Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN around and appeared with him for just 5 years , that Junior is eminently qualified , without more , to be appointed a Judge of the High Court and he would
make a great success of career on the Bench.

The Body of Benchers must therefore as a matter of law and regulations make pupilage in Law Firms for at least a period of 5 years compulsory for all our new Wigs

JCI Senator Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo, SAN is the Asiwaju of Ita-Ege & Idi-Aro, Ibadan