BY YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE
In the history of the Bench in Nigeria, Justice Samuel Olumuyiwa Jibowu occupied the centre-spread as the first indigenous judge.
He was the first African to serve on Nigeria’s Supreme Court, the first African police magistrate, the first Nigerian High Court judge and a pioneer of the Nigerian Judiciary. He was also Chief Justice of Lagos and the old Western Region successively. In fact, he died on the Western Region job, passing away on June 1, 1959, aged 59.
Born on August 26, 1899, he left Nigeria in 1919, for London where he attended Oxford University, England and earned a degree in Civil Law. He was called to the bar on August 8, 1923, at Middle Temple, London. His Number was 69.
By 1931, he was a police magistrate, the first African to hold such a position during the time colonial authorities distrusted Africans. In 1942, he was appointed a Judge of the High Court.
He later became a puisne Judge at the High Court in Benin City and in 1957, he was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Lagos High Court and the Southern Cameroons.
One debate that may never go away is how he lost the Chief Justice of Nigeria’s seat to Justice Adetokunbo Ademola on April 1, 1958. Jibowu was Ademola’s senior by six years, according to records and in the Judiciary of their era that ran strictly on seniority, it was given that the senior of the two, would be the first indigenous CJN.
The expectation that Jibowu would succeed the last colonial CJN, Justice Stafford Foster Sutton who retired in March 1958, was not to be. A petition was written against Jibowu that he made a political statement and, therefore, not fit to be the Chief Justice.
His loss, became the gain of Adetokunbo (1906-1993), the son of Oba Samuel Ladapo Ademola II (1872-1962), the Alake of Egbaland.
Jibowu, famously headed the Commission of Inquiry set up to investigate the corruption in the Cocoa purchasing company of Ghana for which nearly 30,000 cocoa farmers had been alienated from the Kwame Nkrumah administration.
14 months after losing to the number one seat to Ademola, the jurist, recorded by history as the father of the Nigerian Bench, passed away.
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