Everything on earth has a divine purpose, something supplementary to society. We are bio-spiritual energies; all energies are resources. We may not see the spirit; still, when we recall the life of the loved living or the dear departed, especially prominent persons, we tell the history of our world. Thomas Carlyle stated the obvious: “The history of the world is but the biography of great men” and, we must add, women, youths, fauna, and flora!

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We do a poor job of recording the lives of our greats. Some Nigerian eggheads even conceived the idea of banning the teaching of history in schools! Luckily, they (for we must forget their names) reckoned without cyberspace—the Internet. Sadly, we learn whatever is put out there; even with Artificial Intelligence (AI), ‘GiGo’ applies: Garbage in, garbage out.

We hardly honor persons in major events and in defined periods of our immediate past: the pre-colonial farm settlements in and around Enugu, the early years of coal mining, the peopling and urbanization of core Enugu, the making of Oscar-winning ‘Daybreak in Udi,’ the coal miners’ massacre, the precolonial/post-independence governments, the coups and pogroms, the Nigeria-Biafra War, Rangers Football Club, republics, and military interregna.

Enugu, the space fondly known as ‘042’ after its land telephone area code, is the celebrated Coal City. Enugu provided the fossil fuel that fired Nigeria into rail-commerce and industrial prominence. In the 1949 Miners’ Massacre, Enugu offered the sacrificial basket of blood that eventually forced out colonial Britain. Enugu is also a land of legal luminaries. Many law students at the premier University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Enugu State University of Technology (ESUT), and Nigerian Law School, Augustine Nnamani campus in Agbani, may not name the seven Supreme Court Justices from Enugu.

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Last year, Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi named the new headquarters of Enugu State customary court of appeal after Chima Centus Nweze, JSC. I was reservedly ecstatic. I do not readily support the naming of state structures after still-active persons, but I do not subscribe to moral absolutes: “Ka ị ma nke à, ị ma nke ọzọ.” I was ecstatic because we hardly honor our greats, and the speed with which we forget the dead is scary.

Governor Chimaroke Nnamani anchored the law school at Agbani. If you were wondering how the governor named a federal institution after his uncle, wonder no more: He did not! In August 2000, President Olusegun Obasanjo visited to lay the foundation of ‘Justice Augustine Nnamani Auditorium.’ He suggested to name the campus after Nigeria’s most educated jurist by miles: Augustine Nnamani, PhD, SAN, SAG, AGF, JSC—a professional pharmacist, an erudite economist, and a juggernaut of jurisprudence. The law school crowned the efforts we made to decentralize law school under Abacha. It was either decentralization, or the Lagos campus would move to Abuja.

Police Academy (POLAC) in Wudil, Kano was upgraded to a degree-awarding academy as 37^th federal university and 124^th university: a core aim of President Yar’Adua’s administration in 2009. I proposed a similar upgrading of the Police College at Oji River as “Dadi Onyeama University of Law Enforcement and Jurisprudence.” Goodluck Jonathan was now president. David Mark was senate president. Ike Ekweremadu was deputy senate president. Easy, right? Wrong! It did not happen.

I was in Abuja for the launching of ‘The Great Judge: Biography of Honourable Sir Justice Anthony Nnaemezie Aniagolu.’ On the long, thru-Europe flight back to base, I read through all 340 pages. An account stuck with me. In 1952, after law school in London, young Barrister Aniagolu flew into Enugu. Yes, we had Emene Aerodrome back then, but cellphone was in hallucinations. No one was waiting for him; no one was expecting him. He just looked forward to seeing his loving mother again after five years.

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Aniagolu got a ride into town in a new car of Jaja Nwachukwu, then an Enugu-based activist lawyer and politician. He went to see Barrister Dadi Onyeama, who was midway in defending a case before colonial Chief Magistrate Nigel Reed. Learned-senior Onyeama nodded tersely to acknowledge the presence of greenhorn Aniagolu in court and whispered to him to take down notes for his cross-examination: Aniagolu’s practice at the bar took off!

Dadi Onyeama went on to the bench, on to the Supreme Court, and on to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, the first Nigerian to be so highly elevated. In a decade, Aniagolu was a popular multimillionaire attorney-at-law. Unbeknownst to many, Aniagolu and Onyeama were first cousins: their fathers were blood brothers. It is a thing of joy that Dr. Loretta Aniagolu has instituted a memorial lecture in honor of the ‘Judge of Judges.’ In addition to serving an updated version of the epic bio of his grandfather and Aniagolu’s benevolent uncle, Eze Onyeama n’Eke (The Story of an African ‘God’), Dillibe Onyeama also wrote a biography of his father in 2019 (‘Dadi: The Man, the Legend’). Still, no great structures honor these great men and other law lords of Enugu.

Thus, the naming of a state judiciary complex after Justice Nweze was “an honour,” according to him, “coming after three previous ones.” It was a good beginning. It beats slapping all sorts of freaky foreign names on estates, layouts, streets, and supermarkets.

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Yesterday, one year after honoring Justice Nweze, his remains arrived Enugu; he had joined the blessed bench of 042 Supreme Court Justices, the law lords of Nigeria:

1. Charles Dadi Umeha Onyeama
2. Anthony Nnaemezie Christopher Aniagolu,
3. Augustine Nnamani,
4. Philip Nnaemeka-Agu,
5. Dennis Onyejife Edozie,
6. Christopher Mitchel Chukwuma-Eneh, and
7. Chima Centus Nweze

There is limited space for eminent jurists to perch at the Supreme Court. We must also remember the chief judges who sat in Enugu, among whom were Hon. Justice Ezebuilo Ozobu and a missed sure-fire candidate for the top bench, Hon. Justice Innocent Azubike Umezulike, OFR who, like Nweze, also passed too soon at 64.

#moe, August 6, 2023

@aladimma