By Tonye Clinton Jaja
Nigeria is like a garden, there are different kinds of plants that populate a garden, there are roses and there are weeds.
Chief Edwin K. Clark was one of the roses in this garden named Nigeria!!!
It was in the year 2021 or thereabouts, that I was first introduced to Chief Edwin K. Clark by the Hon. Attorney-General of Ondo State, Dr. Kayode Ajulo, SAN.
We drove from the law firm office of Dr. Kayode Ajulo, SAN at Asokoro, Abuja, Federal Capital Territory to the home of Chief Edwin K. Clark.
We were ushered into the bedroom and the chief was lying on his bed, and he gave us a lecture on the history of Nigeria and commentaries on current affairs!!!
It is true that a person cannot remember the exact words but what I still remember is that from that moment onwards Chief Edwin K. Clark treated me as an adopted son.
He introduced me to the Vice-Chancellor of the Edwin Clark University which opened up academic collaborations and signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners-ALDRAP for the introduction of Legislative Drafting as an area of law at the Faculty of Law, at the Edwin Clark University, Kiagbodo, Delta State.
The general idea was to teach law students the skills of legislative drafting and advocacy before they graduate.
The larger plan was to introduce legislative drafting into the curriculum of contemporary legal education in Nigeria.
We had previously introduced the same initiative at the Faculty of Law, Nasarawa State University through the benevolence of Mazi Afam Josiah Osigwe, SAN the current President of the Nigerian Bar Association-NBA.
Nigeria currently has over 200,000 lawyers, imagine the impact when we have more philanthropic-minded lawyers making donations to support causes for the improvement of the curriculum of contemporary legal education in Nigeria.
The garden of Nigeria has just lost one rose!!!
Adieu papa!!!
