Today I want to celebrate someone who has had an unparalleled influence in my life. I gained admission into the Faculty of Law, ABSU in 2005 with the dream of graduating and joining a law firm in Aba or Umuahia (please don’t misunderstand me) to practice the regular courtroom Litigation practice.
I was enjoying my regular lectures jeje when I attended the Law Dinner in the second semester of my first year. That was when I encountered him for the first time. He blew my mind and changed my worldview on many fronts. He introduced me to what he called “Law Clinics” which at that time didn’t make sense.
But it piqued my interest enough for me to long for 400L when I would be qualified to be a member of the Absu LawClinic. And I did in 2009 under the leadership of Prof. Sam Erugo as Coordinator and Maureen Ify Obi Chinze as Clinic Head. In January 2010 I competed in the National Client Counselling Competition organised by Nulai Nigeria with Prof as the President. My Partner was the delectable Amalachukwu Nwazota and we won the competition and thereby earned the right to represent Nigeria and indeed Africa at the 2010 Brown Mosten International Client Counselling Competition in Hong Kong.
Thanks to this platform I boarded a plane for the first time in my life. These days whenever I am on board (which is an average of 24 times a year) I always reflect on that first time and that man who God used to make it happen. I returned for the competition a few more times as a Judge and also a Coach. He invited me to Abuja (my first time) as a Speaker at an All African Conference and lodged me at the palatial Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham Abuja.
He gave me the opportunity to undergo my first and only internship in life with NULAI Nigeria. Just before I left university, he invited me as a resource person to address Law School students at NLS Enugu Campus.
The next year when those students had become lawyers and I was undergoing my law office attachment in Abuja, I met one of them who said it didn’t make sense that I was doing attachment that year because they honestly thought I was a law lecturer the previous year when I came to address them.
I know he has forgotten all these but how can I? Gentlemen permit me to reintroduce to you Prof Ernest Ojukwu SAN popularly addressed as Teacher. I am not God but he is a Law Teacher, eminent Lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him.
Orji Agwu Uka is an Associate with the law firm of Babalakin & Co. and is based in Lagos
