Pictures have surfaced showing Ms Kemi Olunloyo handcuffed to a man. Both adorned in what is presumably prison uniform.

It is presumed that both were making a court appearance when the pictures were taken.

This brings to mind the drama that happened when the late legal icon and civil rights activist, Chief Gani Fawehimmi, insisted on making a court appearance in prison uniform.

I will share the respected columnist, Olatunji Dare's recent narration of the drama while I ask "should persons undergoing trial appear in prison uniform?"

Ms Olunloyo

First, an acknowledgement, and then a caveat.

I owe the title of this piece to Femi Osofisan’s play, Once upon Four Robbers. I cannot claim much familiarity with that work. But somehow, its title bobbed up from the deepest recess of memory, and I shamelessly adapted it.

So, to Himself the Okinba, ìbà.

The caveat: Other than the title, Osofisan’s play and this piece have nothing in common.

Twenty-seven years and two months separate the dramas related here. The first one was acted out in a hallowed courtroom of the High Court of Lagos, and the other in a rowdy session of the Senate. The one was riveting drama, the other an unsubtle show of power.



First, the court drama.

The famous prisoner, jailed for expressing a perfectly legitimate request that his case be assigned to a judge other than the one before whom his prayers had been denied in as many as 10 previous appearances, insisted on turning up before yet another tribunal in his prison uniform.

Prison officials would have none of it. He was a prisoner all right, but they maintained that it would be unseemly for him to appear before a tribunal in prison clothes. That may have been a concession to the fiery attorney, one of the sharpest dressers in the business.

But he was not flattered. He was not ashamed to be a prisoner. He was not embarrassed to be seen in public dressed in prison uniform. Whose body was it, anyway?

The Tribunal was just as troubled as the prison authorities. Why would the suspect insist on appearing before so grave and dignified a body in prison clothes? After all, he was not your run-of-the-mill prisoner but an honourable member of the Bar who, in another circumstance could be standing before the Tribunal as counsel rather than culprit.

Perhaps the prisoner’s attorney could persuade him to appear before the court in his everyday clothes and not in his prison uniform?

No, thanks. All that the law required, his sedate and urbane leading counsel replied, was that his client appear before the Tribunal. His client was ready to answer the Tribunal’s summons, without preconditions.



The police officer despatched to fetch the prisoner returned, without him. The prisoner would not step out of the precincts except in his prison uniform, the officer reported. The proceedings were adjourned.

Two weeks later, the prisoner was brought to court wearing that contentious uniform, ebullient as ever, showing not the faintest sign of embarrassment and decidedly not asking to be pitied. If anyone ever looked spiffy in a prison uniform, it was Prisoner Number J60/4990.

The press photographers clicked away. They knew a unique moment when they saw one.

A robust sense of humour was unlikely to be counted even among the prisoner’s minor assets. But he had an almost infinite capacity to surprise. And so, he urged the photographers to make a good job of taking the snapshots, and to be sure to send the prints, with his compliments, to the kabiyesi judge who had jailed him for contempt.

The Tribunal commenced its assignment at last, under an intriguing division of judicial labour whereby a suspect, arrested by the federal authorities (unlawfully, said a judge) and detained by the same federal authorities (lawfully, the same judge said), is prosecuted by the Lagos State Government before a Tribunal empanelled by the federal authorities.

But its discomfiture at having to try the suspect in his prison uniform was almost palpable.

Not for long, however. Between the first session at which the prisoner did not show up and the second one at which he turned up in the prison uniform they found so discomfiting, some enterprising prison official had combed ancient statute books and found, to the immense relief of everyone in that corner, a law that apparently prohibited appearing in court or before a tribunal wearing a prison uniform.

This deus ex machina was read out solemnly to the prisoner. He was unimpressed, and so was his attorney. It was not immediately clear whether this was a contrivance, an ingenuous interpolation. But it resolved the problem, and the prisoner soon regained his freedom.

Prisoner Number J60/4990 was none other than Gani Fawehinmi, our Gani of cherished memory, and the foregoing is based on my column with the same title for The Guardian (January 30, 1990), reproduced in my book, Diary of a Debacle. His attorney was the legal titan Chief GOK Ajayi (SAN), also since deceased.

The second case about a uniform has been playing out lately on the floor of the Senate, with television cameras beaming it live to a national audience. It has little of the texture, the subtlety of the Fawehinmi case. But who cares for subtlety when you can have mass entertainment guaranteed to take away attention from the pains of the recession and other discontinuities of social life, however briefly?


Dr. Dare's piece titled 'Once upon two uniforms' continues at www.thenationonlineng.net/upon-two-uniforms/

I still searching for Gani's prison uniform pictures.

Naptu2, can you help?


These ones bring back memories.

No! absolutely No!! is wrong, the person on trial is not yet prisoner, he/she has not been convicted by the court or sentence.. he/she was only be remanded pending when he would be able to perfect the bail condition or when the court we eventually listen and take care of his bail application.. prison uniform are mainly for convict.. there is wrong

johnie:


Not for long, however. Between the first session at which the prisoner did not show up and the second one at which he turned up in the prison uniform they found so discomfiting, some enterprising prison official had combed ancient statute books and found, to the immense relief of everyone in that corner, a law that apparently prohibited appearing in court or before a tribunal wearing a prison uniform.

This deus ex machina was read out solemnly to the prisoner. He was unimpressed, and so was his attorney. It was not immediately clear whether this was a contrivance, an ingenuous interpolation. But it resolved the problem, and the prisoner soon regained his freedom.

Who knows what this law is and if it applies in this particular case?

Interestingly, Gani was charged with criminal defamation a number of times.

Also interesting is the fact that the conviction for contempt (which led to the prison uniform brouhaha) was eventually set aside by the Court of Appeal.

Vangurd newspaper while chronicling his travails reported:

"On March 17, 1988, Gani was charged with Mr. Nojeem Jimoh (then Punch Editor) before an Ikeja Chief Magistrate’s Court for Criminal Defamation against government on March 17, 1988.

A particularly celebrated case was when he was charged with Mr. Nduka Irabor for criminal defamation against government before an Ikeja High Court on April 20, 1988.

Two days later, April 22, 1988, Gani’s 50th birthday, he was docked before an Ikeja high court, again, for criminal defamation against government.

Later same year, he was before another magistrate in Ikeja for breach of the peace.

The following year, in 1989, Gani appeared before Justice Fred anyaegbunam at the Transition to Civil Rule (Anti-sabotage) Tribunal, Lagos for sabotaging the Babangida transition programme, and in 1990, he was charged and imprisoned by late Justice Ayorinde of the Lagos High Court in 1990 for contempt of Court. The Court of Appeal in Lagos however set aside the judgment.

www.vanguardngr.com/2009/09/military-govts-and-ganis-32-detentions/