By Gideon Njoku
Legal luminary, Chief Richard Akinjide, SAN, is dead.
He passed Monday night, aged 88 years.
Akinjide, former Minister for Justice under the President Shehu Shagari-National Party of Nigeria, NPN’s government, would have turned 89 years in November.
Sources quote his daughter, Jumoke, Minister of State, Federal Capital Territory, under the President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, as confirming his father’s passing as she sobbed.
Akinjide was a voracious reader, a brilliant discussant, and an intelligent commentator on public affairs.
Perhaps, his most brilliant outing as a Lawyer was his handling of the Presidential election case between Shagari and UPN’s Chief Obafemi Awolowo, SAN.
Fractionalising Kano votes, he managed to convince the Supreme Court that 122/3 of 19 was 12, not 13.That mathmatics which gave the Presidency to Shagari, over Awolowo who had a formidable array of professionals in that field – Professor Ayodele Awojobi of the Mechanical Engineering Dept, UNILAG, Professor of Mathmatics, Chike Obi, UNN, and Professor of History, J.O.K. Ajayi, including himself, a SAN – at once earned him friends and enemies, especially in his South-west region.
The Supreme Court had, thereafter, barred anybody from citing the judgement as a legal precedence.
He was fondly called the Mathematician-Lawyer or 122/3.
Born on November 4, 1931, in Ibadan, Oyo State, Akinjide attended Oduduwa College Ile-Ife and passed out in Grade One, Distinction, aggregate six. He was called to the English Bar in 1955.
He will be sorely missed by, especially, his grandchildren all of whom he dotted on, and often proudly flaunted their brilliance and achievements.
