On Name-Adornment: A Look at LSS Bus and "Governor D's Era"

History is capricious in its awards of fame. It fixes on dramatic incident and ignores the quiet service that may count for much more. - George M. Wrong (1860 - 1948) Life is in stages and just like the many pages of the Bible, you cannot view it all at once. In fact, you will need to take the days one at a time, like blocks being pieced together in the building of an edifice. However sometimes, just like the scriptures, you will need to compare one episode with another to get an appropriate interpretation of a phenomenon. Taking anything on its face value as its definitive version is similar to lifting the letters of the word of life without seeking the spirit behind those letters – an agreed age-old path to death; death in this sense not exclusive of the body but perhaps more particularly of the soul, the intellect and the social being. It is in the same vein that the courts in Nigeria and other nations particularly within the Commonwealth jurisdiction have always in the interest of justice sought to know the spirit behind any law while interpreting that law in the settlement of a dispute or the determination of a suit before them. Lawyers as co-ministers in the temple of justice are therefore enjoined to do the same. By inference, even students who are Lawyers-in-equity have that unpronounced responsibility to always look beyond the surface of any statute and consider the facts and circumstances before taking a stand or making a pronouncement on any matter. How well they are intellectually endowed or prepared to do that is but a discussion for another day. My first encounter with the Law Students Society (LSS) bus was on Facebook; a dear friend of mine had put up a side-picture of a seven-seater Toyota Sienna otherwise called a ‘Space bus’ and tagged it “LSS Bus”. I did not put up a comment neither did I ‘like’ the picture, I simply smiled, wryly. We were promised a bus by the Dayo Ogunyemi-led administration and we all saw them make serious efforts at making sure the promise was fulfilled so if they could only deliver a ‘Space bus’, at least they tried, it was an unprecedented feat. That was my thought and the next day when I met Dayo Ogunyemi (then LSS President) who will hereafter be referred to as Gov. D, in the Resource Centre, I hit him on the shoulder and quipped “The Space bus will be useful, particularly for Moot and Mock committee when we are going for the next Space Law competition preliminaries!” If he felt insulted, he concealed it with a smile that half-stretched into the upper hemisphere of his lips and said “Tobi, wo, a ma rira later” meaning “we’d see later”. Two weeks before then, I had met Gov. D in a popular eatery in New Buka and he was just about leaving when I and a graduate friend walked in and perhaps to impress her, Gov. D reminded me in the open that he promised LSS a bus and he would deliver before leaving. To me, that was a mere puff and I simply told him to show me and not just tell me. My friend being a former student of the Faculty felt she need not drag herself into our flimsy banter and busied herself with ordering our meals. A week of suspense-filled wait followed. The ‘Facebook LSS bus’ had refused to get to Ife the weekend before as against earlier speculation and I would not hear anything from Gov. D until the following Wednesday when I received a mail stating that Gov. D had followed me on Twitter. I switched to Twitter to follow him back and review his timeline. There, I saw a post where Gov. D boasted that he had delivered the LSS bus and on all his promises to the society. I quoted the text and replied asking if he had indeed fulfilled all his promises. I expected a fiery response or perhaps a threat as I had been told he had been dishing out in the course of my absence but none of that came. The next day, as I made my way to the bus stop after the S.N.O.W. programme at the Covered Pavilion, a blue Ford bus drove past me and beyond the spectacle of a relatively unknown glittering blue vehicle tickling my imagination, the inscription “LAW STUDENTS SOCIETY” shot a mixed drip of awe and admiration into my veins. I could have chosen to call Gov. D on phone but I decided to preserve my voice for the RECTAS gateman who would definitely not conceal his anger at my late arrival. I would see Gov. D two days later in the faculty and the details of our brief exchange of words is irrelevant here. The crux of my discussion here is the decision of the Law Students Representative Council (LSRC) that the inscription “Governor D’s Era” be removed from the body of the bus. The manner of the removal, be it scrapping, tearing, spraying, defacing or re-painting has not been made clear and is not even the focus here. I rather want to examine the rationale behind the decision in the first place and the ratification thereof by the almighty Congress interestingly under the watch of the new administration and other colleagues.

Name-Adornment; Taking a Look into "Governor D's Era" and the LSS Bus

History is capricious in its awards of fame. It fixes on dramatic incident and ignores the quiet service that may count for much more. - George M. Wrong (1860 - 1948) Life is in stages and just like the many pages of the Bible, you cannot view it all at once. In fact, you will need to take the days one at a time, like blocks being pieced together in the building of an edifice. However sometimes, just like the scriptures, you will need to compare one episode with another to get an appropriate interpretation of a phenomenon. Taking anything on its face value as its definitive version is similar to lifting the letters of the word of life without seeking the spirit behind those letters – an agreed age-old path to death; death in this sense not exclusive of the body but perhaps more particularly of the soul, the intellect and the social being. It is in the same vein that the courts in Nigeria and other nations particularly within the Commonwealth jurisdiction have always in the interest of justice sought to know the spirit behind any law while interpreting that law in the settlement of a dispute or the determination of a suit before them. Lawyers as co-ministers in the temple of justice are therefore enjoined to do the same. By inference, even students who are Lawyers-in-equity have that unpronounced responsibility to always look beyond the surface of any statute and consider the facts and circumstances before taking a stand or making a pronouncement on any matter. How well they are intellectually endowed or prepared to do that is but a discussion for another day. My first encounter with the Law Students Society (LSS) bus was on Facebook; a dear friend of mine had put up a side-picture of a seven-seater Toyota Sienna otherwise called a ‘Space bus’ and tagged it “LSS Bus”. I did not put up a comment neither did I ‘like’ the picture, I simply smiled, wryly. We were promised a bus by the Dayo Ogunyemi-led administration and we all saw them make serious efforts at making sure the promise was fulfilled so if they could only deliver a ‘Space bus’, at least they tried, it was an unprecedented feat. That was my thought and the next day when I met Dayo Ogunyemi (then LSS President) who will hereafter be referred to as Gov. D, in the Resource Centre, I hit him on the shoulder and quipped “The Space bus will be useful, particularly for Moot and Mock committee when we are going for the next Space Law competition preliminaries!” If he felt insulted, he concealed it with a smile that half-stretched into the upper hemisphere of his lips and said “Tobi, wo, a ma rira later” meaning “we’d see later”. Two weeks before then, I had met Gov. D in a popular eatery in New Buka and he was just about leaving when I and a graduate friend walked in and perhaps to impress her, Gov. D reminded me in the open that he promised LSS a bus and he would deliver before leaving. To me, that was a mere puff and I simply told him to show me and not just tell me. My friend being a former student of the Faculty felt she need not drag herself into our flimsy banter and busied herself with ordering our meals.