My visit to a varsity stopped me from becoming a lecturer –Eyimofe Atake (SAN)

In this interview, legal luminary, Dr. Eyimofe Atake (SAN), tells KEMI LANRE-AREMU why he chose to study law and how he reached the pinnacle of his careerWhat would you attribute your fit and agile look to?I think it is as a result of daily exercise. I used to be an athlete in school and I represented virtually every institution that I attended. I promised myself that when I left university, I wouldn’t let myself go and I would continue to keep fit. I watch what I eat; I try not to take in junk although I fall into the trap, especially when I attend social events. I also try not to worry and I don’t stress myself over issues. When I put my head on my pillow at night, I fall asleep.Since you loved athletics that much, why did you study law?In those days, if you told your parents that you were not going to be a professional, you were in trouble. Right from when you were young, they would have been telling you that you must either be a lawyer, accountant, doctor or engineer. Even if you said you wanted to study something like History, they would quarrel with you. While in school, I was very good at History and I loved it but I couldn’t have considered taking it further. My father used to be a judge of the High Court of the Mid West State. In any event, I only excelled in art subjects such as History, English Literature, Government and Politics. In life, you must really do what you are good at. So, I went in that direction without even thinking about it.How would you describe your childhood?I never struggled for anything. The first time I started having memories, I lived in Ikoyi, Lagos, in the 1950s. The first school I attended was St. Saviours School in Ikoyi and when I was there, I cannot remember any other black pupil there. I went abroad to study towards the end of 1973. I have never really had to struggle. However, my parents emphasised that I must always be disciplined and get results as well as work hard and have integrity. I have always tried to work hard to get to where I am. When I got my first degree, they said I had to get a master’s degree. When I got the master’s degree, they said I should go for my PhD. I went to good universities like Cambridge and the London School of Economics. I also had the advantage of mixing with all kinds of elitist people. When I came back to Nigeria, I worked with a very senior lawyer, Chief G. O. K. Ajayi, who was a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. I worked with him before I went to set up my own chambers.How was it at the time you set up your practice?When I started out on my own, it was a bit difficult. I found out for the first time that it is not just about you and your ability that would make you successful. There are other things and you need other people that would help you to be successful. For example, if you want to do legal work for a good corporate or a high net worth individual, you must be able to show that you are good at what you are doing. They wouldn’t just take you for that type of work because of who you say you are or because of your qualifications. You must prove your worth. You must start small and build up. This means that you must build your reputation and be known for what you do in order to get big jobs. When I started, that was the reality I faced.What are some of the things you did to prove your mettle?I did several things to come to the forefront. I became a prolific writer by writing a lot of articles in the newspapers such as The Guardian and Daily Times. I remember that when (former military dictator, Gen. Ibrahim) Babangida started the privatisation programme, a decree on privatisation was issued and I was the first man to ever write on privatisation in detail based on the decree. I know that I was the first person to do that because on the day the decree was to be issued, I already had a copy of it. I went to my office and did an analysis of the decree all day and night. On the morning the decree was issued, my article was published in The Guardian newspaper. When I presented the article to the editor of the paper, he said I couldn’t possibly have written an article based on the decree because their reporter was still trying to get hold of the decree. I showed him a copy of the decree with my article. He collected it from me and ran out. I waited for him in his office for about an hour and when he returned, he said to me, “I stopped the press.” The article was serialised in three parts. At a time, Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi moved from The Guardian and became the Managing Director of Daily Times and I was pleasantly surprised when he called me one day in my office. I can remember him saying that he needed my help and I wondered what type of help it could be because to be the Managing Director of Daily Times in those days was a very big deal. I thought I should have been the one approaching him for help. He said he wanted me to be writing articles for his paper. He told me he wanted to start a law page and he wanted me to be in charge because he used to read my articles in The Guardian. I told him I was very busy with my practice and I might not be able to keep up but he said whatever I could write was okay. So, I used to write those articles and I would go and give them to him personally. If he didn’t publish it in Daily Times, he would publish it in Sunday Times. It changed the face of Daily Timescompletely so that if you bought Guardian, you would feel the need to buy Daily Times. In those days, those two newspapers were a must-read. I then switched from giving my articles to The Guardian to giving it to Dr. Ogunbiyi. When Ogunbiyi left Daily Times, the paper was never the same again after that. That was how I helped to bring myself to the forefront.One day, Nduka Obaigbena, who was then the publisher of a magazine called This Week, called me and said the then Chairman of the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, Dr. Hamza Zayyad, was looking for me. I didn’t believe it because the man was in very high demand at that time and everyone wanted to see him. Anyway, I went to Nduka’s house and he took me to a block of flats owned by Central Bank where Zayyad was staying at the time because he used to be a Director at the Central Bank. When we got there, we met a lot of people waiting to see him. We announced our presence and when Dr. Zayyad came out, he immediately asked, “Where is the young man?” Nduka pointed me out to him and he took me in. He told me that he had been reading my articles on privatisation and that he found them interesting. He said they were planning an international conference on privatisation and he had already put the name of someone else to give a lecture on the legal aspects of privatisation. He showed me the name of the person and I literally had goose pimples because in terms of the legal profession, I was very junior to the person. He told me that he would cancel the person’s name and put mine so that I would be the one to give the lecture. He initially wrote my name with a pencil and he said he did that because he still had to discuss it with some of his other committee members, even though he had already discussed it with one of them who was open to the idea. He also said he wanted to put me in a sub-committee for the nationalisation of the Nigeria National Fish Company. He asked me to visit his office the next day at the Ikoyi secretariat so that we would drive to the Tafawa Balewa Square and Babangida would swear me in. It was very surreal for me. All these events are very definitive in my memory because they were career-changers; not in terms of money but in terms of being known. When you are known for having done many things and having excelled at them, you would include them in your CV.If you didn’t have a privileged background, do you think you would have turned out this way?I would but I am not going to deny that I did get a good head start. In any field you are in, once your name is known and people find out that you went to good schools, you would have to prove that you are good for the big boys to take you seriously. My background did help because in the days when I started, if I knocked on a door and I mentioned my name, people would ask if I was the son of Justice Franklin Atake. However, I never leveraged on my father’s reputation but it helped because a lot of people knew about his antecedents, when he was a judge and senator in the Second Republic. That would help you get in the door but you then have to show that you are really good. Sometimes, the name also works against you. There was a time it worked against me so badly that I was almost in tears.I became a SAN at my third attempt. In my attempt to get to the top of the profession, I faced all kinds of challenges. I’m not saying that others don’t face those kinds of challenges too but it pays to keep things in perspective because some people also got conferred with the rank of SAN the first time they applied.How did you feel when you didn’t succeed in your first two attempts at becoming a SAN?One thing I knew from experience was that if you are persistent, you would get it. However, if you feel that you are competent enough to get it and you don’t, you may feel rejected, especially when you look at the list of people who were successful and you feel like they aren’t better than you. What you should do is be strong and recharge your batteries.At what age did you become a SAN and do you think the process is still free and fair?I was 41 years old when I was conferred with the rank of SAN in 1999. As to whether the process is still free and fair, I would say that no situation is infallible and when you look at situations, there is always something wrong. I don’t mean to knock anybody down but I would say one thing. When you have to appoint about 12 persons from a long list of people, it is tough. There were some judges in the Supreme Court then who placed a lot of importance on who would become SAN. They were very strict about it. I know a particular judge who told somebody, “Over my dead body, you would never take silk.” And the judge blocked the person for a very long time. As a matter of fact, he could only become SAN after the judge died. The competition is always tight and you cannot satisfy everybody. I have seen that over the years, they try to make the rules tighter and now, they are placing a lot of emphasis on the High Courts. In my day, there was real advocacy in the high courts but now, they are so congested that there is no time for such advocacy. Many of us followed our cases from the High Court to the Court of Appeal and then Supreme Court. These days, many people just use criminal law appeals to meet the criteria at the Supreme Court and those cases may not have been originated by them.Why did you decide to pursue law to PhD level?After I was awarded my LLM, I went to thank my teacher, Prof. Rosalyn Higgins (QC), for all that she did for me.  She asked me what I wanted to do, and then I told her that I hoped to go back to Nigeria to practise law. She asked me if I didn’t want to do research work because I write well and it will be a waste if I don’t do it afterwards. But I told her that I didn’t think so. She told me to do a doctorate, but I said that would make me teach. She asked what was wrong with that and I replied  nothing. So, I started the doctorate in Cambridge University. My supervisor over there was another distinguished gentleman, Prof. David Williams (QC). He asked me what I intended to do and I told him that I intended to teach at the university because somebody told me to say that in order not to kill their enthusiasm. That was how I concluded my doctorate and came back home.Why did you not go into the academics?I had two minds – whether to be a lecturer or to go into practice. Unlike now, those days, there was a rule that if you are a lecturer in the university, you are not allowed to practise. You must first resign or retire as a lecturer before you can go into practice. For the first six months, I was on a high after my doctorate; I didn’t want to really work because I had been working hard. My father allowed me that liberty because he was excited that I had fulfilled his dream. While I was thinking of what to do, I met a professor who is now deceased at a cocktail party. He said he had been hearing about me through one of my colleagues in Cambridge who is also his friend. Then he told me to come and be a lecturer at their university. He asked me to come and visit. I thought I would explore that possibility.  So, I went to visit this particular university. While I was in this man’s office, he in fact called a few professors whose books I read while I was in school in the UK.  Meeting them in flesh, I was overwhelmed. In the meeting we were just talking generally and when I asked to see their computer room, they said they didn’t have computers.  When I went to the university’s library, most of the books had their pages already torn out. When I asked the professor why the pages had been torn out, he said that it was the fault of the students because they knew that the cases are very popular. Instead of going to photocopy it, they just tear it out. I left that university unhappy.What are some of the qualities required to make a success of one’s life?To excel, you must have goals. Stop worrying about what Mr. X or Mrs. Y is goals are. You should worry about your own goals. What do you want to achieve? That was the first question I asked myself. When I knew that I wanted to be a practising lawyer and a SAN, I knew that the thing to do was to go to a chamber where they did a lot of litigation.  So, off I went to work at Chief G. O. K. Ajayi’s chambers.When I started working with him, he was already an established SAN. Seeing how he did his work, I didn’t discuss with him or anybody what I wanted to do. I only discussed with myself what I wanted to be. What I am saying in essence is that  keep your goals to yourself and don’t go announcing it to everybody because you will never know who is waiting for you at the next bus stop. Instead of discussing my goals with anybody in chambers, I kept watching my boss, how he worked and I thought to myself that I would like to be a SAN like him.Next is to find out what it will take to achieve your goals. So, you find out what the criteria are. You know what it takes to get there; you know that only hard work can get you to your target. If you are at one place at any point, you have to move from there to your goal. You know yourself that the road from here to there is going to be rough; some may be smooth but generally, it is going to be rough.Another thing I do is to stay on my lane. I don’t care what Mr. X is doing on his lane or what Mr. Y is doing on his lane; this is my lane to this destination, and I stay on my lane because I am not in competition with anybody. I know that I must get good quality work; so, I look for the work. To be able to get there, I must execute the work and it takes hard work. In fact, the hard work is the simplest for me. I say that because I have done the doctorate degree. I have sat for 18 hours working continuously before; so, it wasn’t a big deal for me. The challenge was getting the thing that will allow me to do the hard work to get to my destination. Getting the work was the challenge and not the work.Did you set out to marry a lawyer?It was a coincidence because when I married my wife, Dorothy, she wasn’t yet a lawyer. She studied law in the course of our marriage. When I met her, she was already a graduate of English and working in a company, which used to be called Ashland but is now known as Addax. She was studying law part-time at the University of Lagos and one of her tutors at that time is the current Vice President of Nigeria Prof. Yemi Osinbajo. We have been married for 28 years and we dated for two years.Apart from law, what other interests do you have?Well, I am a good student of history. I love the arts a lot. I am delighted to find out that the arts in Nigeria has moved to another level indeed and I am one of its beneficiaries. I also like watching football; I am a die-hard supporter of Manchester United. I like doing football analysis. I socialise a lot and I like the occasional good party.Lawyers are known to dress conservatively but the same cannot be said for you.Well, when it comes to dressing, I can match colours. I look at a particular colour and determine what best to wear it with. I don’t dress like that to court because there are rules and anywhere I am, I try to obey the rules so that I can survive in that environment.You have been tagged a socialite. Do you agree with that assertion?I cannot disagree with it even though I am not. This is because in those days, if I was not at most functions, it won’t be complete. I get a lot of invitations but what people don’t see is the me that is working till past midnight.  They just see me at events all dressed up, and my clothes well combined. Some people even call me the most stylish SAN. I don’t disagree but what is clear is that I am particular about my appearance and it is something that comes naturally. My mother was like that; so, I must have picked that from her without even knowing.

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