ESQ Legal Practice Magazine JUNE 2014 EDITION | Page 12

private practice. Handling such celebrated cases and special inquiries as Oguta Chieftaincy
dispute 1958/59, the Amanyanabo Dispute 1956/60 and many others.
In 1966, Justice Oputa was appointed a Judge of the High Court of the then Eastern Nigeria
and he moved on to become to first Chief Judge of Imo State ten years later. In 1984, he was
elevated to the exalted position of the Honourable Justice of the Supreme Court.
It is said that in any portrait or profile of persons, the human figure is known by its relation to
the objects or scenes against which it is seen and are enabled by the very causes they serve.
Porters are admired by their pots and artists by their paintings. Musicians are known by their
music and poets by their songs. Similarly, the best way to see a judge is through the events on
the Bench. According to Professor Laski, “There are more than mere incidents of time. There
is a mind in events”. The Holy Bible also says that, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is the
man”. Since judges are meant to be men of sound mind, it is expected that he will judge things
according to his mind. As would be seen, Oputa's sense of the law and justice was coloured by
his own personal experience. Orphaned at a tender age, Oputa was raised by his
grandmother, Madam Ogonim Enesha a devout catholic who also brought him up in the
conservative high mass liturgical way of the Catholics. As an ophan, He was therefore “no
stranger to adversity and the ever present peril of bad luck”; Oputa was also a thorough bred
humanist having studied history, economics and later law. This further gave him a deeper
insight into the world of humanity and the frailties of human mind. This deep understanding
would later be seen in his judgements and other legal writings.
Looking at some of Oputa's utterances on the bench, and the views which he expressed on
those matters about which he had felt and spoken strongly, one begins to appreciate the
courage, conviction, firmness, fairness and integrity with which he dispensed justice. Oputa
as a judge was known to listen; analyse and synthesise; he possessed the instinct for the right
call; and was harmed with the most effective communication in accessible reasoning and
language. He exemplified that “passive habit and self-restraint” which according to Glanville
Williams, is the fundamental feature of the English Judicial System.”
It is said, and even the late Harold Laski conceded, that in every age and clime, the temper of
the judiciary varies with the prevailing social and political circumstances. From history, we
find records of battles fought by eminent Judges throughout the c [