Niki Tobi JSC (1940-2016): Tribute to a great jurist

In more than half a century’s history of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and in its great chambers, have sat great jurists of remarkable energy and legacy, who we often commemorate for the impact they have made in the judicial firmament. The Supreme Court itself, the highest and final court of the land, is truly […]

In more than half a century’s history of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and in its great chambers, have sat great jurists of remarkable energy and legacy, who we often commemorate for the impact they have made in the judicial firmament. The Supreme Court itself, the highest and final court of the land, is truly the epitome of the majesty and supremacy of the law profession. Every learned advocate who has ever stood before the venerable Justices of that court, particularly in their perfect panoply can testify to this truth. Honourable Justice Niki Tobi has not only shared in that history but has helped in shaping the Nigerian jurisprudence as propounded by the court in all its authority, its fallibility notwithstanding.
Until his death on the 16th June 2016 after 25 years on the bench, he held the unique privilege of the office of the Honourable Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, evidently the most distinguished honour according to the order of judicial precedence of this country. By the 2015 official record, he was one of the 87 Honourable Justices of that great citadel including past Chief Justices of Nigeria since its inception in 1956. Diminutive in stature yet towering in presence, Justice Niki Tobi was destined ultimately to sit at the Supreme Court. In a sense that is both symbolic and historic; his entry to the Supreme Court was the second of its kind in the history of the court. Justices Niki Tobi and Okay Achike were the only other professors of law to have sat in the court following the legendary Justice Teslim Olawale Elias, who himself was Professor, Dean, Attorney-General of the Federation and Chief Justice of the Federation.
From a humble background, Justice Tobi eventually fulfilled his determination to study law. He took his LL.B and LL.M degrees from the University of Lagos and Ph. D from the University of Nigeria. Like every judge, Justice Tobi did not start his law career on the bench. He started at the public bar as state counsel before he assumed his academic career in 1976 at the Faculty of Law University of Maiduguri, where he would first etch his name in the legal academe. Within a decade, he became Professor, Dean of Law, Chairman of the University Consultancy, Deputy and Acting Vice Chancellor, all at the same time by the time he left for the bench in 1985.
At Maiduguri, he was clearly the leader of the professoriate, which included our ‘good old teachers’ like professors Olusegun Yerokun, Nnamdi Aduba, among others. He was notable and iconic in truth and in deed. For several years, he taught Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence and Nigerian Legal System and probably other courses. He edited the Maiduguri Law Journal, one of the few law journals at that time.
I had the privilege of being taught by this great scholar. He was simply a delight to listen to in the classroom and I cannot recall any serious student who would miss his class. He had a commanding and pedagogical presence and he liked students to argue with him. His narrative of the constitutional history of Nigeria, laced with back-of-the-scene account you wouldn’t read in textbooks, was refreshing and riveting. Above all, he liked brilliant students. At moot court trials, he would push students to their limits. He was not a teacher to hide the brilliance in any student. I vividly recall his open commendation of Ibrahim Buba, now Honourable Justice of the Federal High Court, in one of the trials.
 It was under his charge that Joe-Kyari Gadzama SAN, Paul Ricky Tarfa SAN, Professor Andrew Chukwumerije SAN, Professor Mamman Tahir SAN, Professor Maxwell Gidado SAN, Professor Isa Ciroma, to mention a few among other eminent lawyers, were churned out to take the profession. Tobi would always be remembered by that generation as the chief teacher and mentor. To all intents and purposes, within a decade’s sojourn in Maiduguri, he had made his mark, packed with the legacy of written books and brilliant lawyers in his tutoring quiver, he was already eminently accomplished as a reputable academic.
 Surprisingly to many of us, Tobi had a keen eye on the bench. Irrepressible achievers would hardly be satiated, certainly not Professor Niki Tobi on a score of achievements. Having conquered the academic world, he took another stage on the bench and nationally. He assumed duty as Honourable Judge of the High Court in Rivers State judiciary, where again I would be privileged to meet him as a budding lawyer in Port Harcourt fresh from law school. There I struck another level of relationship with him.
Right from his High Court days, it was clear he has taken his towering presence to the bench. With combined 17 years as High Court and Court of Appeal Judge sitting in Lagos and Enugu behind him, his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2002 until his retirement in 2010, his total 25 years judicial career, was marked with nothing short of a distinguished academic, intellectual and juristic excellence.
 Justice Tobi belonged to the enviable scholars’ cult of the bench. Like the Biblical Naphtali, he was imbued with the beautiful faculty of articulation with which he firmly expounded the law. He was an outstanding jurist of no mean repute, ever probing, intensely erudite and strongly analytical. He was both idealistic and pragmatic. As far back as being a Justice of the Court of Appeal, his dictum in Caribbean Trading & Fidelity Corporation v. NNPC (2002) has added to existing cases and materials in the study of Nigerian Legal System taught by him many decades earlier.
 Contextualising the contemporary place of English law authorities in Nigerian courts, his Lordship said: ‘English is English. Nigerian is Nigerian. The English are English. So also the Nigerians are Nigerians. Theirs are theirs. Ours are ours. Theirs are not ours. Ours are not theirs. We cannot therefore continue to enjoy this borrowing spree or merry frolic at the detriment of our legal system. We cannot continue to pay loyalty to our colonial past with such servility or servitude. After all, we are no more in slavery.’ A case of juristic patriotism and activism rolled into one!
Justice Tobi had great admiration for superb advocacy and excellent legal research. And for that reason, most brilliant and resourceful lawyers would find succour in him, of course not at the expense of dispensing justice according to the law. As a young lawyer, I had been privileged to practice in his court in Port Harcourt and I have witnessed his commendation of sound advocacy of counsels like OCJ Okocha and FA Osho, among others, at a time, in a prophetic manner, long before they took the silk.
One may not continually agree with his judgments in every material particular, but they all bear his characteristic depth of reasoning, lucidity of expression and the wit of a sage. He took systematic scholarship and intellectual industry to the bench and brought a refreshing regime of adjudicatory fidelity to the fore. With the clarity and transparency of a sagacious judge, he often unraveled the opacity of esoteric legal submissions and made it difficult for clever barristers to make issues out of nothing and nothing out of issues.
 In the field of intellectual property law, Justice Niki Tobi was part of the panel of the Supreme Court decision in Ferodo v. Ibeto (2004), which is unarguably the locus classicus on the legal status of accompanying features of registered trademarks, a somewhat befuddled area, and by that has contributed in the shaping of trademark jurisprudence in Nigeria, particularly in an increasingly complex commercial IPR environment requiring more dynamic judicial construction of obsolete IP laws.
Justice Tobi was characteristically passionate about law; little wonder he was both a consummate academic and judge who entrenched the primacy of law over every profession. On every opportunity, he consistently upheld the supremacy of the Constitution and of rule of law.
 Judges, especially Supreme Court judges, have made great constitutional pronouncements, it is no exaggeration that Justice Tobi was a constitutional law expert who not only taught and interpreted the Constitution but also wrote one, making him a constitutional oracle only reserved for few men. FRA William and Professor Ben Nwabueze have remained the only two in recorded Nigerian history. In his often cited reasoning in Inakoju v. Adeleke (2007), he redefined the path of constitutional law on impeachment under Section 188 of the 1999 Constitution and provided a code of honour for any legislative House that wishes to impeach its governor or deputy governor under a democratic system. One of his earliest judgments at the Supreme Court in NEPA v. Edegbero (2002) at the periphery of dissention would later in Nwana v. FCDA (2004) engender a clarification of the boundaries of dissenting and concurring judgments, thereby helping to place the authority of judicial pronouncements in its correct perspective.
Perhaps one of his most controversial judgments was the presidential election petition in 2007 in Buhari v. INEC (2008), largely because of the nature of the case itself, like election petition cases, especially at the highest level.
It was probably unknown to him during his academic years whist teaching constitutional law that he would become a dramatis personae in the constitutional history he was teaching. It was providential that, in 1999, he was appointed Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, which produced the present 1999 Constitution and in 2005, he again was called to chair the Constitutional Conference, both landmarks in the political history of Nigeria.
Tobi JSC was a great jurist to be proud of in the Nigerian academic, judicial, constitutional and political history and certainly one that will be remembered in national annals.
While mortality is a human attribute, great men have often immortalised themselves by the sublime dimensions of their works in the service of mankind. Such is the achievement of Justice Tobi that has eminently swelled the rank of great men who have left indelible imprints in their chosen professions. Though Justice Niki Tobi, a devout Christian and family man, has passed unto glory, his works stand as a befitting tribute to his life and calling.
In the words of Christopher Okigbo, the great poet ‘after we had formed, then only the forms were formed and all the forms were formed after our forming.’ It is my personal belief that every man of purpose must not only know but live his purpose, and in a world full of garbed tributes, he faithfully writes his own tribute that no one else can ever rewrite for him.
Justice Niki Tobi knew his purpose, lived his purpose and wrote his own tribute in his own native handwriting that speaks eloquently after him. He was one of the remarkable personalities I have known. I hereby submit, May it please your Lordship, May you enter your eternal rest at the bosom of the Lord Jesus.