F.O.M. Atake

It was a case of unlawful assembly by students at the University College, Ibadan who had organized a demonstration in Lagos on the 28 November 1960 at the Tafawa Balewa Square.The protests got completely out of hand and the students who held out against anti-riot police jumped over the fences into Parliament buildings destroying most of the furniture and beating up anyone in sight.Said Mr. Justice Adewale Thompson writing in 1991 in his book Reminiscences At The Bar at 65:[8] "We had advised the students to plead guilty so that I could address the court in Allocutus under section 450 of the Criminal Procedure Ordinance, requesting the magistrate to exercise his discretion to dismiss the charge because of the hardship a conviction will cause to the career of the students who were in their final year at the University College."[9]With the creation of the Mid-Western Region, Nigeria in 1963, Franklin Atake left Lagos to take an appointment as Chief Magistrate in Warri.To the best of my knowledge, he harassed no counsel or litigant....... Justice Atake was strong-willed and highly principled and held fast to what he believed in.He sent the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, his cousin, Mr. Godwin Mogbeyi Boyo to prison for contempt of court when he thought he crossed the line.Naturally, as Godwin Boyo was the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, the decision received a great deal of publicity.The press generally supported Boyo – there were persistent calls in nearly all the Nigerian newspapers for Franklin Atake to resign from the Bench.Having failed to convince the then Chief Justice of the Mid-Western Nigeria, The Honourable Mr. Justice Mason Begho, to refer the matter to the Federal Advisory Judicial Committee (a body responsible, inter alia, for taking disciplinary action against judges), the Governor wrote to the Head of State and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, General Yakubu Gowon, asking that some way be found to refer the matter to the committee.The chairman of the committee, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Dr. Taslim Olawale Elias, called on Franklin Atake for his comments.After a very detailed consideration of the matter, the Federal Advisory Judicial Committee decided (in a decision endorsed by the Head of State) that: "Although Mr. Justice Atake may have acted indiscreetly, it did not see that a case had been made out for his removal from the Bench or for any disciplinary action to be taken against him.If the then Chief Justice Sir Adetokunbo Ademola felt that disciplinary action was necessary, he would have so directed and raised the matter before the Committee at one of its subsequent meetings.The Committee deprecates the attitude of the press and Military Governors interfering in matters that are essentially judicial, and in calling for the removal of judges.Atake argued that Ovie-Whiskey had not first resigned or retired as Chief Judge of Bendel State in accordance with a provision in the 1979 Constitution and so any appointment as FEDECO Chairman would be null and void.Hence, the now famous and landmark decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Senator Abraham Adesanya v President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; The Hon.In Justice F O M Atake v Chief Nelson Asigboro Afejuku [1994] 9 NWLR Part 368, 379, the Supreme Court of Nigeria for the first time in Nigerian Legal Jurisprudence decided that a Judicial Officer who has ceased to be one is entitled to conduct his case in person.At issue was the Supreme Court decision in which Karibi-Whyte, JSC held that, section 340(2) of the Criminal Procedure Law, Cap.He also continued to produce a stream of opinions on national issues particularly on derivation, and matters pertaining to the Itsekiri tribe and the Warri crisis.For example, he submitted an address to the "Judicial Commission of Inquiry into The Ethnic Conflicts Between Ijaws and Itsekiris In The Warri North, South and South-West Local Government Areas Of Delta State".The commission had been set up inter alia, to find out the immediate and remote causes of the conflict between Ijaws and Itsekiris in the months of March to May 1997.Atake went before the commission to say and also published in some National newspapers that, the cause of the conflict was the false announcement by the Military Administrator of Delta State, Colonel J Dungs that Warri South Local Government Area had been created with headquarters at Ogbe Ijaw; an Ijaw settlement in Warri Division.: Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom for the purposes of calculating the amount of revenue derived from the natural resources of those states is the low watermark of the land surface of each of those states, Franklin Atake disagreed with the Court and caused his views in a well-articulated article to be published in some national newspapers.