Akinola Aguda

Western Region

called to the bar

Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho. After, leaving the supreme court in 1975, he returned to Nigeria and continued his judicial career as Chief Judge of Ondo State. In 1976, he was a leading member of the committee that recommended Abuja as the capital of Nigeria. He retired from civil service in 1978 and became the director of the newly created Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of Lagos.^[5] As director of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Aguda assumed a new role, as a critic of corruption and governance in Nigeria and Africa. To Aguda, the lack of thorough knowledge of judicial norms and precedents by the common African man or woman leads to the abuse of vital human rights by the government. A situation that can be fuelled by poverty, which allows many to rot in jails without due process or even a notice of trial as they do not have the money to get an astute lawyer or the connections to effect changes to their situation.^[6] His defence of the right of suspects was a crucial issue that was prominent during his days as a judge. In 1968, in the case of Agbaje vs the Western Government of Nigeria, he wrote a comment that is still relevant in today's Nigerian judicial system.^[7]

In a democracy like ours, even in spite of the national emergency in which we have been for the past three years, I hold the view that it is, to say the least, high-handed for the police to hold a citizen of this country in custody in various places for over ten days without showing him the authority under which he is being held or at least informing him verbally of such authority.^[8]