A POPULAR Christian hymnal states that we would only be remembered by what we have done on earth when we passed on. That could not have become more real when the legacies of Nigeria's first female law professor and former Vice Chancellor of the Lagos State University (LASU), the late Jadesola Akande resounded recently. It was at the inaugural memorial lecture organised by the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) in her honour.The event, which evoked some fond and emotional memories of the late vice chancellor saw participants, particularly colleagues, jurists, family members and friends extol her virtues.The Director General of NIALS, Professor Epiphany Azinge, (SAN) said the woman was a great academics and intellectual. According to him, the lecture, which was going to be an annual event, was the institute's way of honouring the woman who earned her professorship at the institute.'We intend to make it an annual event. The lady is not just being honoured because she was a good lawyer, vice chancellor or a professor, but because she earned her professorship here in the institute. She was just not the first woman but the first person to be honoured with a professorial appointment at the institute and to that extent, we consider her part and parcel of us,' he said.Delivering the inaugural lecture in her honour, Canadian-based Nigerian Professor of Law, Ayodele Atsenuwa, called for more freedom for women, whose rights the late Akande fought doggedly for.The memorial lecture was titled: 'Constitutionalism and Legal Feminism: Stepping Stones or Obstacles in the Long Walk to 'Freedom' for Women in Nigeria'' Prof. Akande died on April 29, 2008 at the age of 68.Atsenuwa who described late Akande as a mentor said that the former VC shared in the aspiration of indigenous academics to make post-colonial academic researches relevant and responsive to the African society's needs.'It is therefore no surprise that she devoted herself significantly to constitutional law, publishing three texbooks in her lifetime on the subject. Although there was no discipline as Women's Law and although she emerged in a period when essentialism undergirded modern law, she challenged the dominant perspective that purported that the formal equalisation of men and women by law always translated their equality in reality,' she said.Atsenuwa explained that Akande combined social activism using law as an instrument for promoting development with legal academics from the outset. Her words: 'It is evident that although her initial research interest was constitutional law and constitutionalism, she widened the elements of relevance in the discourse beyond the traditional issues of constitution-making, separation of powers, doctrine of Rule of Law, fundamental rights and the like.'Expounding the ideals of Akande on the discrimination against women, the guest lecturer said: 'It was not only traditional culture that discriminated against disadvantaged women. Western culture grafted on to much of traditional cultures at colonialism was no less patriarchal and when its own values and standards were added on, the situation of women was compounded,' she said.
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