In January 1993, Ibrahim Babangida was Nigeria’s military ruler. He was supposedly in the last year of an interminable transition at the end of which he promised to hand over power to an elected civilian administration. Moshood Abiola was actively canvassing to inherit that mantle. As Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mohammed Bello was in his fourth year at the apex of the system for resolving disputes between Abiola and Babangida in that process of transition from military to civil rule. He had been CJN since 1987. At the time, Abiola was also Nigeria’s most influential newspaper publisher under the Concord Group. One of the titles published by the Concord Group was a weekly magazine called African Concord. Its editor was Bayo Onanuga.
The previous month, in December 1992, Bayo Onanuga’s African Concord ran a cover under the title: ‘‘Justice Mohammed Bello: Kick him out now! Lawyers demand.” Essentially, the story alleged that military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, had bribed the Justices of the Supreme Court led by CJN, Mohammed Bello, with gifts of exotic Mercedes Benz cars. At the time, Mercedes Benz produced the most famous luxury brand of cars in Nigeria.
This story would not have amounted to much but for what followed. Shortly after New Year in 1993, nine of the Justices of the Supreme Court instructed Frederick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams, the doyen of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), to file a case before the High Court of Lagos State against the Concord Group, African Concord, and its editor, Bayo Onanuga, claiming that the story had defamed them. The Concord Group instructed stormy petrel, Gani Fawehimin, to represent them. At the Ikeja Division of the High Court of Lagos where the case was tried, Samuel Omotunde Ilori, who would later rise to become the ninth Chief Judge of Lagos, presided.
This case had many sub-plots. It turned out, for instance, that Chief Williams’s youngest son, Tokunbo, who was shortly thereafter to become a SAN himself, was married to the daughter of the presiding judge, Olusola. When Gani Fawehinmi asked the judge to disqualify himself from the case, he declined, describing the request as “unprecedented” and an invitation to “an abdication of his sacred duty as a judicial officer.”
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) at the time, Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, the Wazirin Jema’a, was a witness in the case. In cross examining him, Gani Fawehinmi asked for his qualifications. Reluctantly, the SGF ventured that he was the proud holder of a Teachers Grade 2 certificate, in response to which Gani spat out (to predictable courtroom mirth) “Teacher’s Grade Two certificate, and he rose through the ranks to become the SGF!”
Ultimately, the case was settled when Abiola elected to apologise to the Supreme Court Justices, who then instructed Chief Williams to withdraw it. In response, Bayo Onanuga resigned as editor of Chief Abiola’s African Concord.
