A basket of cases
Thursday, June 7, 2001
When I read that someone was suing Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), and Abdulsalami Alhaji Abubakar on behalf of some victims of military misrule in Nigeria, I sat back and read it again. I was not too keen on the Chicago lecture series; I knew that all the cybernoise would amount to nothing more. I was right. That a group of people was suing former heads of state, including Chief Ernest Shonekan of the malformed and aborted Third Republic, was something worth reading. Lo and behold, names started popping up: Abiola, Saro-Wiwa, Enahoro, Fawehinmi, Nwankwo, etc. Interesting!
After the Chicago jamboree, I inquired from a reliable source whether Abubakar was "served" (since the others chickened out or were never slated to attend). My source informed me that there was nothing of the sort. Within hours, Laolu Akande filed a telling report: the man was served; it was captured on film. Huh? Quest que c'est? Who was feeding me fabu? Not Laolu, of course: Writers can afford to spice things up, but journalists should not peddle wishes as facts in our US of A. So I asked my source to recheck the story from persons close to the former head of state. The same answer came back: he was not served! Okay. Weeks down the road, the truth emerged. Our Laolu was right: Abubakar was served court papers.
April 21, 2001, I drove down south to the greenery of the Potomac for a parapo party. I was looking forward to having some fun after a long week of local sociopolitical fanfare in the greater New York metropolitan area. I ran into Attorney Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye. Question: "Who in the whole wild world missed the point?" We talked. I asked questions. He explained. Super legalese. I was impressed. Then I chuckled. He didn't know why -- if he noticed. I had a vague idea. It was something he had written. Before I left for San Francisco for Memorial Day weekend, I dug it up. It dates back to June 21, 1999. Here is the piece:
MOE, your observations are well-taken. I did not mean to suggest that engineers speak worse English. I was only illustrating a point. You may agree that while lawyers have only the grammar as their tool of communication, engineers have in addition to grammar their mathematical symbols and their plans and drawings as means of communication. If the engineer's grammar is wrong and confusing, we may look at his mathematical equations and plans for clarification. But for the lawyer, there is nowhere else to look at outside his language.
Ah ha, you get my drift. No? It is really simple: Someone asked the wrong question and got the wrong answer. To serve means "to give out," "to supply," "to provide," etc. It does not mean "to serve food"! Am I joking? How else would you explain that the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, an erudite professor of medicine, former vice chancellor of a university, and an ex-minister of education, did not know that a former Nigerian head of state was summoned to appear before a court of the land? You go ahead, explain that to me -- in simple English, no legal jargon.
Now, let's go back to the genesis of the above quote. In this particular cyberforum, we were cyberwarring over the craze for titles. Suddenly, someone injected "grammar in communication." Another wanted to know for how long I had inhaled white chalk before markers became the norm. [Note that we no longer use markers; interactive, wireless distant learning is now entrenched, complete with Powerpoint presentations and live links to relevant Internet resources.] It slowly snowballed into "ogonogo oyibo" or "dogon turenci." You know how forum threads can build up and untangle at all ends. So I tried to bring it all together. Posted two years ago, I managed to pull it, thanks to the power of cyberarchiving. Here goes:
Since we are here to learn, let me point out that everyone needs good tools of communication. What are these tools? They are the totality of means and ways of getting our thoughts and needs and desires across to both the initiated and the uninitiated, and they (tools of communication) vary according to the media. Lawyers have the same tool as engineers; they configure these tools differently. And we know them as jargons. In any one of these two trades, GOOD grammar is [an] essential part of the language they use. A must.
I usually tell my students to consider mathematics a second/third language. They don't get it until after a few months, and we are all speaking an entirely different lingo. A "radical" is no longer some political agitator; "roots" is no longer a movie above slavery, and let's not get into "quadratics" and "reflections" and "slopes" and "conjugates" and "complexes." Now, we are still talking algebra here -- you just wait until statistics (arts) and calculus (business, science and engineering)! But when all that is done, the engineer still must explain how a simple food blender works -- in simple English.
For the lawyer, he could throw in all those Latin phrases to convince a judge or impress insurance companies, but s/he still needs to address a jury in simple English, and much more: body language is essential, especially measured eye-contacts and effective gesticulations. "The Practice" and "Law and Order" provide good examples. Oh, did we forget Perry, my Perry Mason, and Maazi Matlock? So you see, we need every tool of communication possible and, above all, common sense.
Equations and technical drawings are languages, believe it or not. The number "7" tells the same story as the word "seven." The sign "=" tells the same story as the phrase "equal(s) to"; just as the symbol "@" communicates to the ordinary Cyberian that [a domain] address follows. A lawyer should be an engineer as well as a medical doctor and more... as others must be lawyers. Because no one could possible practice all, a basic knowledge of the workings of other trades won't hurt. For example, if a lawyer wants to defend the guy who wrote the "Melissa" virus, how on earth is s/he going to begin without a working knowledge of programming languages and Internet tools?
There you have it, there is more to a profession than the ability to "knack big grammar" -- some of which sometimes are bombastic emissions that confuse houseflies.
I rested my case; anything else would have been academic. * Back to Abubakar: the man got a raw deal from Nigerian missions abroad. Period. He should be beside himself… livid, and he must ask questions. Whether he hires ten lawyers or twenty, he must know why the Embassy in DC thought it was dealing with the Nigerian court system, where IBB ignores court summons and where any head of state can do and undo. The man surely deserved better.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Abubakar is innocent. No. In fact, I still want General Gowon to stand trial for crimes against humanity. [By the way, when is he going to appear before Justice Oputa Panel, or has he?] If we had tried Gowon in a proper legal setting, we would not have had the excesses of General Sani Abacha's junta (1993-1998), for which Abubakar is now being dragged through legal mud. We would of course not have Chief Anthony (Gowon's Goebbles) Enahoro suing Abubakar, since Enahoro is answerable (in my books) for his participation in wartime crimes against humanity. Yet no one sued him. [I hope he has made peace with his soul and dropped his defense of the use of hunger as a weapon of war.]
So, it is all well and good to bring Buhari and IBB and Abubakar to book. I have nothing personally against these men. They could be very fine officers and gentlemen. However, we need to let people know that they cannot get away scot-free when they fool around with fascism. We need to remind the likes of Gowon (Pogrom, 1966) Murtala Muhammad (Asaba Massacre, 1968) Obasanjo (Kalakuta Republic, 1976), Shagari (Bolokori Butchery, 1985), Abacha (Ogoni Agony, 1995) and again Obasanjo (Rape of Odi, 1999; MASSOB, 2001) that they should not have ordered genocidal maniacs under their command to butcher innocent souls. The only way to stop these anomies is make perpetrators pay.
However, I have looked at the case against Abubakar, based on my limited legal knowledge: The Detroit-based attorney handling the litigation has one big basket of cases on his hand. No, this is not a basket case, and it not a case of baskets. There are moral issues here, and there are some legal precedents, especially with the Shell vs. Wiwa ruling. He should be able to hold his ground for the Abiolas and Wiwas, especially with his initial successes by default. It is going to take a while though to establish locus standi and all that jargon. For example, recall that Chief M. K. O. Abiola had ordered that DNA tests be done to establish his heirs? Ah ha! It gets even more interesting. But I will spare you the details for now. By the time we are set to go, over a million of Nigeria's petrodollars must have gone down the drains of American legal system. That's how Africans remain hewers of wood.
When I spoke with Emeka, he looked set and ready to battle on all fronts from his Washington, DC base. By the time I came back to Jersey, he had rolled some dice. I looked forward to an interesting legal rumble by two Nigerian attorneys in America, not the usual slip-and-fall scams. I also suspected an eventual out-of-court settlement for Abubakar, the smallest fish of the trio. This would open up the expectation for eventual netting of Mr. Big Fish Himself, the Maradona of militocrazy. Alas, the Chicago-based attorney for Abubakar stepped out with the wrong foot. In trying to whiteout the obvious, he hurt the now white-bearded General again. Yet there is still much less to the case than meets the eye. Once a better legal front for Abubakar overcomes the initial setback of lackadaisical diplomacy, or is it diplomatic snafu, and the first- and second-round, sucker-punch knockdowns delivered by the appellant's attorney, we will see the matter for what it is: a big basket of cases.
Thursday, June 7, 2001
