MEMBERS of the Academia and Legal Community gathered recently in Ado Ekiti in honour of foremost educationist, legal icon, philanthropist and founder of the Afe Babalola University (ABUAD), Chief Afe Babalola, as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Ado Ekiti Branch instituted two special projects to honour and immortalise him for his contribution to education and the legal profession in the country.The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Ekiti State which, for the first time in its 15-year history was hosting the 2011 Law week ,used the occasion to commission the multi-million naira Aare Afe Babalola Bar Centre which was solely built and donated by the legal luminary to the association as well as initiate an Annual Public lecture to celebrate his achievements.Estimated at about N100 million, the Bar Centre houses a Conference Hall, a library, open court yard, canteen, offices and conveniences, with a borehole for regular water supply.Babalola, who spoke at the commissioning, lamented the damage done to the education sector, which he said, had affected legal education and the profession in general.He disclosed that out of every 10 lawyers interviewed for employment, hardly would more than four be found who could write a letter free of grammatical errors.Like every other area of the economy and social life, he expressed regret that a lot of damage had been done to the state of infrastructure and the practice of law was no exception. Today, lawyers now ride motor cycle to court. In the court room, seniors showcase their age at the bar with tattered gowns, dirty and perforated wigs including dirty and coloured bibs, he added.On remuneration, he attributed the wretchedness of some junior lawyers to the poor remuneration paid by their senior colleagues stressing that what many successful senior members of the bar pay their junior lawyers was intolerable.He described the problem of Ekiti as that of poverty, which was not restricted to the state alone.What is happening in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and the others can happen in Nigeria, there is much unemployment in the country. Out of about 200,000 come out of universities and less than one per cent get employment and the cumulative effect is that unemployment and poverty.On the state of education in the country, he declared that the future of education lay in the hands of private individuals.Most Ivy League institutions we hear of were developed by their alumni. If alumni of various institutions in Nigeria make individual and collective effort to donate towards the development of their universities, no institution would be begging the government for money.Babalola who was also conferred with an award at the Annual Public Lecture titled The Role of the Legal Profession in Promoting an Enduring Democratic Culture in Nigeria, delivered at the Owolabi Hall of the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti vowed to lead a national crusade to ensure that the 1999 Constitution was reviewed to reflect the peoples will and new trends in governance.The legal icon that suggested a new revenue sharing order stressed that the new constitution should address the sharing of revenue accruing from states. What we have today is a federation where most of the states are no more than pay masters or conduit pipe for payment of salaries to civil servants. This is because most states spend more than 70 per cent of its revenue on payment of salaries thereby leaving little or nothing for development.Babalola, who thanked the NBA for honouring him, however, implored it to sustain the annual public lecture and spoke of plans to incorporate it into the Afe Babalola Foundation, instead of allowing it to suffer a premature death for lack of funds.Lamenting the poor state of infrastructure in the state, he said: It is regrettable how ABUAD, the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti and other federal establishments on the Ado-Ijan Road are virtually cut off from other part of the world due to severe damage to the road by huge trucks carrying iron and cement plying the road and neglect of the federal and state government to fix the road.The government of Ekiti State has denied the university infrastructure. We deserve encouragement and assistance, which we are not getting. Oyo State promised good road, land, water and electricity, but I was persuaded to site the university in Ado-Ekiti, now I have been left alone. This is not fair.Representing the Governor of the State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Ganiyu Owolabi, extolled the legal icon for his contribution to human development through the establishment of a university and the donation of the bar centre.He said:Apart from the services it would provide, these facilities would be an employer of labour to people in the state. This effort will go a long way to compliment current effort by the state government to commence programmes that would absorb about ten thousand youths, irrespective of part loyalty. I enjoin all stakeholders to come and work together to develop the state.Meanwhile, the Ewi of Ado Ekiti, Oba Rufus Adejugbe who formally commissioned the centre described Babalola as a special gift to this generation and the state in particular.He further appealed to indigenes of the state to cultivate the habit of giving in order to develop the state.The value of money is what you do with it which is using it to improve the life of others. All of us cannot be an Afe Babalola but all of us put together can make an Afe Babalola.Lawyers have a crucial role to play let us put politics aside and come together. I am worried that some of you (lawyers) may not be able to ride your big cars if things continue like this.With the establishment of the ABUAD, he noted that its contributions to the overall development of the town and has brought the town to the world focus. Oba Adejugbe reaffirmed that what should be paramount in the minds of indigenes was how to return home and invest in the development of their people.Chairman of the NBA in the state, Mr. Owoseni Ajayi who expressed gratitude to the donor for single handedly building the bar centre recalled how all efforts geared towards having a befitting Bar Centre by the branch hit a brickwall as a result of paucity of fund.While the building would go a long way to enhance law practice in the state, he said that the branch decided to institute an Annual Public lecture which would be maintained throughout Afe Babalolas lifetime and thereafter as well as a special and well deserved award for his contribution to the development of the state.Extolling the virtues of Babalola, whom Ajayi descried as a legal icon, mentor, father, educationist and cheerful giver, the chairman said of the project: The mustard seed which the philanthropist sowed in August 2005, has today grown into an oak of legal institution, which will forever serve the interest of legal practitioners in the state and beyond.While listing some of the achievements of the honouree, Ajayi hinted that Babalola had trained over 500 lawyers and produced over 14 SANs, the largest from any law chamber in the country, several judges and attorney general in the state and the federation.In his lecture entitled: The Role of the Legal Profession in Promoting an Enduring Democratic Culture in Nigeria, Justice Pius Aderemi explained that by the various pronouncements, the nations courts had helped to sustain the democratic culture in the Nigeria but like other any other human institutions, there was always room for improvement.With the bar centre increasing the number of his donations to twenty, other donations and contributions include an ultra modern St. Pauls Anglican Church, Ado-Ekiti, 400-seater lecture theatre at UNAD, 500-seater auditorium at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), building complex to Inland Club, Ado-Ekiti, modern building to African Heritage Library, Ibadan, office building to Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ado-Ekiti, Law Faculty Building, UNAD, Bar Centre Ibadan NBA, Art Nuclear Medicine building at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, and substantial contribution to the construction of an ultra-modern palace for the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, among other numerous contributions and donations cutting across every sector of the human endeavour.
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