Benjamin Nwabueze: Teacher, Lawyer, Lawmaker And Scholar

 By Evance Kalula

The sad news of the passing on of Professor Benjamin Obi Nwabueze, first academic Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), “Professor of Professors”, as he was fondly referred to in Nigeria, is still reverberating in academic, legal fraternity and international circles. Many well-deserved tributes to the remarkable man and his memory are still circulating.

*Nwabueze 

Please indulge me, l also thought I should share a personal tribute to him, expressing my gratitude and indebtedness to the great man. Ben Nwabueze was a remarkable man, an outstanding teacher, lawyer, law maker and scholar. He typified the excellence that Africa produces, for the most not fully acknowledged. He was an African treasure of the highest quality.

I was fortunate to cross paths with Professor Nwabueze in my formative years, when he went to Zambia in exile, during the Biafra war. I was then an LL B student at the School of Law, like in the case of Ugandans during Amin’s upheaval, Zambia became a meeting point of highly experienced and renowned professionals and scholars in the ‘70s.

The country was a great beneficiary of scarce experience and skills she did not have, having had only 400 university graduates at independence in 1964. The Law and Medical Schools at the University of Zambia particularly benefited.

I was a ‘troublesome and rather noisy’ student union leader then, with anti-establishment sentiments to match, and what on looking back now, was prone to ‘follies of youth’ when I became one of the great man’s wards. Despite my moments, l was fortunate to have in Nwabueze as Dean of Law, and the late David Phiri, as Chair of the University Council, two amazing ‘god fathers’! They both encouraged and took me under their wings, urged me to apply for the Rhodes scholarship, and served as my referees.

Nwabueze went beyond that encouragement, having ensured my appointment as a Staff Development Fellow, he took me, under his supervision, and made me a tutorial assistant in the law of contract. With my subsequent election as a Rhodes scholar in 1975, the road to an academic career was set.

Nwabueze was a brilliant, independent minded and stubborn man, as Kaunda was to find out to his embarrassment. Kaunda appointed him to the One-Party Commission, intended to a rubber stamp the project, clearly trying to co-opt him. He was shocked, Nwabueze wrote a scathing minority report, opposing the project instead.

That independence was the mark of the man, but he was also a brilliant scholar and excellent teacher, particularly in his monumental work on constitutionalism in Africa. His ‘trilogy’ of books on constitutionalism in Africa which debunked his old teacher, Stanley de Smith’s ‘straight jacket’ Westminster model was profound.

The books, which incidentally were all meticulously handwritten in his small, neat handwriting, were a marvel. Although they are the outputs that mainly made his reputation, Nwabueze’s work was wide ranging. He became a banker and founded a successful bank. He dabbled in politics briefly and even served as Minister of Education, but his restlessness and independent mind could not tolerate political chicanery.

His intellectual work continued at the international level. Significant among that work was his contribution to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) supervisory system. He served as a member of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR). The CEACR is an independent supervisory body that monitors the application of International Labour Standards (ILS) ratified by member states. Its membership consists of highly experienced and qualified experts, including former judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), former senior judges from various countries and distinguished academics in labour and human rights law.

Several members of the current cohort are former Chief Justices, including those of South Africa and Panama. The current Chair of the CEACR, Judge Graciela Dixon, is herself a former Chief Justice of Panama.

As always, Nwabueze was not one to be a passenger on the CEACR, he was vibrant and forthright in his contributions. I am for my sins, Chairperson of a similar but tripartite ILO supervisory body, the Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA). It is a great honour and gratifying to follow in his great footsteps, for me to serve as the first African of the CFA.

At a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiments in many countries, not least in South Africa where l have been privileged to live for more than thirty years, I cannot help but reflect further on how Zambia was a meeting point and greatly benefited from the influx of skilled migrants during the ‘70s.

Among them, were some prominent South Africans then on exile, including Eskia Mphahlele, Ben Turok, Lewis Nkosi, among others. I was privileged to be taught by Mphahlele. I also closely interacted with Ben Turok, an association that continued when he returned to South Africa from exile.

For me, it is the spirit and stature of Ben Nwabueze that towers above them all, he was a remarkable man, brilliant, independent and stubborn.

He had his moments, it is said for instance that he holds the record for the shortest term as Dean of the School of Law at the University of Warwick, he left after serving only weeks as Dean. It is said that he could not allow himself to be ‘bullied’ by the Vice-Chancellor, such was Benjamin Nwabueze. He was a complex man.

I truly feel blessed and privileged to have had the opportunity and privilege to sit at the feet of the Master that Benjamin Obi Nwabueze, SAN, was, MHSRIEP!

*Kalula is Chairperson of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA) and Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Cape Town.