By Vincent Kalu
It was a night of glitz and glamour, last Saturday, in Lekki, Lagos State, as the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus Law Class of 1989, held a dinner party to round off their 2024 annual convention.
The dinner night that started about 7 pm on Saturday and lasted until the wee hours of Sunday morning was the high point of the four-day annual convention of the class.
For three nights and four days, beginning from penultimate Thursday and ending on Sunday, 25th August, the UNEC89 Law Class held sway in the hotel with their spouses and children.
The group had several other activities from Thursday evening to Saturday afternoon. It started with a party at the rooftop of the hotel on Thursday evening to welcome members from different parts of the country and in the Diaspora. An Annual General Meeting (AGM) chaired by the outgoing National President, Hon. Paul Awoyesuku, was held on Friday. One of the focal points of the AGM was an election that threw up Chief Ike Onwuchuluba, the new national president, and other executive members. The class also elected members of the Board of Trustees, chaired by Justice Pete Obiorah of the Court of Appeal for the purpose of registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission. The BOT, according to the outgoing national president was not imbued with any executive powers under the constitution of the class, but could act in an advisory capacity.
During the meeting, spouses of the alumni group went to do charity work. They donated food and other items worth hundreds of thousands of naira to motherless babies’ homes. A health talk was also incorporated into the programme, with a nutritionist, Mr. Charles Oguike, giving a lecture on foods to avoid and the ones to eat. He urged members to pay attention to their specific body requirements, and emphasised that the central point was moderation.
To spice up the convention, there was also an outing at the Atican Beach – surfing, horse-riding and dancing, which threw the women and children into ecstasy. The Saturday dinner was preceded by a photo session featuring the classmates, their spouses and the children.
Chief Emeka Ngige, SAN, chaired the dinner, dishing out humour that enlivened the atmosphere. He noted that the class has four SANs, two before and two to be sworn in later this month. According to him, there is a serving Justice of the Court of Appeal, as well as several high court judges and magistrates among the classmates. There are also several other mates making waves in other areas of endeavour, including in business, he said.
Coordinator of the Lagos Chapter of the Class, Mr. Emeka Opara, in his welcome address tagged “The Burden of Certainty and the Joy of Visitation,” thanked the guests and his mates. He likened the joy of the Lagos Chapter to the joy of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation.
The outgoing President, in his address, noted that faith brought the class back together after the hiatus brought about by COVID-19 and the economic downturn that Nigeria has experienced since then. He appreciated the local organising committee that planned and executed the convention, and the several mates both in Nigeria and the Diaspora that facilitated it. He listed the achievements of his executive and the good things that happened to the class in his tenure. Thereafter, the new executive led by Chief Ike Onwuchuluba was sworn in.
The guest speaker, Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, spoke on “The Impact of the Supreme Court Decision on Local Government Autonomy on the Nigerian Federal Structure”. He wondered why the people of the South West and the South East always paid more attention to the work of ethnic irredentists like the group that gave the recent quit notice to Igbo people to leave Yoruba land, instead of the positive stories of cooperation and sacrifice like the Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi/Colonel Fajuyi story, and the Otunba Subomi Balogun/Dr. Alex Ekwueme story concerning the registration of First City Merchant (Monument)Bank (FCMB).
According to Falana, why should people, instead of going to court to challenge their very unconstitutional and brazen prevention from voting in Lagos by hired thugs and Agberos, resign to “leaving it to God”? God is too busy to do our work for us, he said.
He mentioned the instances when he, Falana, as a young lawyer, was sent by the late Alao Aka-Bashorun to go and defend students union leaders (the late Chima Ubani and his comrades) of the University of Nigeria, when they were detained by the Ibrahim Babangida regime, and when the same regime influenced the then Vice Chancellor of UNN, Professor Chimere Ikokwu, a students’ leader in his own days, to rusticate Chima Ubani and his colleagues.
“These are positive stories to be highlighted by both sides of the River Niger, while there should be cooperation in tackling the Agberos recruited by politicians to divide the people,” he said.
He traced the history of mismanagement of resources by both federal and state governments, especially from the Ibrahim Babangida era. He referred to the several economic programmes imposed by the IMF and World Bank over the decades. “Why are Nigerians getting poorer whilst money is being pumped to state governments?” he asked, mentioning humongous amounts shared by state governments just in the past few months.
In his words, the Supreme Court is now the Supreme Court of the government in power. He noted that the Supreme Court has no legislative powers, insisting that the recent judgement of the Supreme Court on Local Government allocations was legislation by the apex court.”
The legal luminary took some questions and proffered answers during a question and answer session. On legal practice, he said that it has to be expanded, noting that lawyers must demand for the right things to be done. He pointed out that there are certain things that can and should be done that would ultimately create jobs for young lawyers.
According to him, about 2,100 people were arrested by security agencies as a result of the recent #EndBadGovernance protests, and that many of them (about two-thirds) are still languishing in detention, almost forgotten with no searchlight by the media on the issue. He reechoed the chairman’s earlier remarks that the UNEC 1989 Law Class needs and deserves more SANs, extolling the two SAN-designates of the Class, Edwin Anikwem and Dr. Monday Ubani, and urged the Class to gear up for more.
The dinner ended with a closing prayer led by a member of the Class, Professor Rev. Fr. Edwin Ezike, who teaches at their alma mater, the Law Faculty of the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus.