I used to have very little patience for the army of area boys who patrol event centres and social clubs on Lagos Island. The moment your car slows down, they descend from nowhere. To me, they were simply drug addicts, winos, hustlers who had missed life’s train and had elected to spend the rest of their days chasing after moving vehicles and reluctant wallets. That, at least, was my verdict then.
Age, however, has a way of correcting the arrogance of youth. I no longer judge so quickly. Why should I condemn a fellow human being whose battle with life I neither witnessed nor understand? As the Yoruba wisely say, Eni o fun ni lowo, ti o o dani loko owo, kii pe ni alarungun ke. You cannot refuse to help a man, know nothing about the storms he has survived, and still pronounce him a failure. Nigeria is an unfair society. When the rich stumble, everybody rushes to ask whether they are hurt. When the poor stumble, the first question is whether they are blind. The rich slip and fall; the audience expresses sympathy. The poor slip and fall; the audience asks why they were not watching where they were going.
Many people are serving life sentences imposed not by judges but by circumstance. Ori yeye ni mo gun, taise l’opo. Some are in prison because they committed no offence. Others because they lacked competent legal representation. Others simply because they could not satisfy impossible bail conditions. Our parents understood this cruel uncertainty of life. That was why they constantly warned us that the ground upon which we all walk is slippery. Their warnings were never merely about avoiding wrongdoing; they were also about avoiding misfortune.
Perhaps that explains why I no longer ignore the area boys. Once they spot me, the entertainment begins. “The Law!” “Barrister and Solicitor!” “Awaiting Justice!” “Awo Agbamuche!” “London Today, Paris Tomorrow!” and several other colourful sobriquets capable of celebrating one’s legal journey from the threshold definition of crime in Aoko v. Fagbemi to minority protection in Foss v. Harbottle. If you know, you know.
These days I respond with guarded respect and whatever little change I can spare. Not because I encourage street begging, but because I have seen enough injustice to know that, but for the grace of God, many of us could easily have occupied the other side of the windscreen. Some of the greatest personal failures I have known never wore torn slippers. They attended Ivy League universities. Some were born into unimaginable wealth. Their family names concealed what poverty could never hide. In Nigeria, privilege often disguises failure while poverty advertises it.
I remember a friend from my secondary school days. During holidays, if you visited their Ikoyi residence, his father would jokingly tell you that he could not disclose his exact location abroad but could mention six countries where “Paddy” might possibly be at that moment. Such was the family’s affluence and international lifestyle. Today, Paddy cannot even afford a car. He moves around in a Marwa and would probably think twice before embarking on a trip to Cotonou. Such are the vicissitudes of life. Life, if I may borrow the popular expression, can be a bitch. Thank God for your own story.
My changed attitude towards these so-called societal misfits was reinforced by two unforgettable experiences. At the dawn of GSM, our chambers owned one precious Multilinks mobile phone. Younger Nigerians cannot appreciate what a telephone line represented in those days. It was almost as valuable as a registered title to land. One afternoon, the office phone disappeared. As I contemplated dragging every member of staff to either Imodi-Imosan or Abigi for spiritual interrogation, my personal phone rang.
“Baba,” the caller said, “someone brought your office phone to sell. Once your name was mentioned, we knew you didn’t deserve this kind of pain. Send somebody. We will return it.” The caller refused any face-to-face meeting. We agreed on a neutral location. He dropped the phone. My office assistant picked it up. That was the end of the matter.
Years later, the wife of one of my clients, a very successful Nigerian, misplaced her expensive mobile phone at a social function. There were no tracking apps, no remote locks and no digital miracles in those days. Once a phone disappeared, it had effectively migrated permanently. Then another mysterious call came.
“We have your client’s phone,” the caller said. “Somebody brought it. While checking the SMS messages, we discovered that almost every message was a prayer for the owner. We concluded she must be a good woman who did not deserve this kind of pain. We found your name on the call list. Our boss therefore instructed that the phone should be returned.” Again, we agreed on a collection point. The phone was returned intact. Tell me again that every area boy is beyond redemption.
These incidents came flooding back when I read the recent advisory reminding lawyers that they should stop using “Barrister” as a prefix before their names. Legally speaking, the advisory is perfectly correct. In Nigeria, there is no statutory title known as “Barrister” as a prefix. Upon Call to the Bar, one becomes a Legal Practitioner—a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. “Barrister” merely describes one aspect of the profession. It is not an honourific recognised by law in the manner many Nigerians have come to assume. Unfortunately, this sensible legal position collides headlong with our national addiction to titles. Nigeria is perhaps one of the few countries where honour is bought, applied for, inherited, rented and occasionally manufactured. We are title-conscious to an almost comic degree.
In our school days, teachers proudly displayed not only their qualifications but the locations where those qualifications were obtained. You would see “B.Ed. Geography Cantab.” Another proudly announced “B.A. (Hons.) London.” Even an ordinary Diploma in Education was triumphantly pronounced “Dipe-Dee” with all the flourish of an Oxford doctorate. Today the epidemic has become incurable. We now encounter business cards announcing “Barrister Dr. Chief Somebody,” “Chief Barrister Kelechi Whatever,” “Chief (Barrister-in-View),” or “Chief Barrister So-and-So, LL.M., PhD (In View).” Apparently, in Nigeria one can now be “in view” longer than some people spend earning the actual qualification.
Nor is the legal profession alone in this parade of prefixes. We have “Pharmacist Okeowo,” “Arch. David Oyinbo,” “Tpl. Joseph,” and every conceivable abbreviation that can fit on a complimentary card. May the soul of the late Fuji maestro, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, continue to rest in peace. Even he once acknowledged one of his admirers during a performance as “Mechanical Engineering Olaiya.” Nigeria can confer a title on anything except common sense.
The boldest attempt to tame this national obsession came from The Guardian newspaper in its pioneering years. The paper boldly adopted the policy that every Nigerian, irrespective of social status, would simply be addressed as Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms. or Lady. No Chiefs. No Alhajis. No Otunbas. No forests of prefixes. It was a courageous editorial revolution. Unfortunately, the revolution reportedly met its Waterloo when one celebrated Senior Advocate insisted that if the newspaper wanted him to defend it in a major lawsuit, his traditional title had better precede his name. That, as they say, was the end of that noble experiment.
So, in deference to the Supreme Court’s advisory, let nobody henceforth address me as “Barrister.” I have no desire to find myself accused of professional impropriety because somebody was over-generous with prefixes. The area boys, however, enjoy complete immunity. Their world operates under a different jurisprudence. You do not prosecute a cat for killing a rat. Their “Barrister!” is not a legal title. It is simply an expression of affection delivered in the dialect of the Lagos streets. They neither know nor care what the Supreme Court has said.
They remind me of the old Lagos story from the late 1970s when a certain Baba Ijebu reportedly spent the night in a brothel patronised by Ghanaian ladies and accidentally left behind a bag containing “owo ajo”. He returned at daybreak in panic, hoping to retrieve his contribution money. The conversation, however, never even got to the missing bag. One of the ladies merely asked, “Which one be the meaning of ‘se e si wo ri mbosu lana’?” Another looked utterly confused and simply asked, “Papa… wetin be ‘bosun’?” The search for the money ended right there. They did not understand the language, so the substance of the complaint was forever lost.
Exactly so with the area boys. Their “Barrister” belongs in the same linguistic universe. They do not know the meaning of “bosun”, let alone the jurisprudence behind the use or misuse of “Barrister.” Since no sensible person prosecutes a cat for killing a rat, I shall continue to answer them with a smile. If, in their colourful dictionary of street honours, I remain forever “The Law,” “Awo Agbamuche,” “London Today, Paris Tomorrow,” or my personal favourite, “Awaiting Justice,” I shall wear those titles without fear. After all, those are not legal prefixes. They are badges of affection conferred by a constituency that has never read a law report but understands, perhaps better than many of us, that justice is still something too many Nigerians are merely awaiting.
Pabiekun.com
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