Chief Samuel Obakayode "Kayode" Eso, CON, CFR (born 18 September 1925 – 16 November 2012) was a prominent Nigerian

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...

. He served as a Justice of the

Supreme Court of Nigeria The Supreme Court of Nigeria (SCN) is the highest court in Nigeria, and is located in the Central District, Abuja, in what is known as the Three Arms Zone, so called due to the proximity of the offices of the Presidential Complex, the National As ...

Early life

Samuel Obakayode Eso was born on 18 September 1925 at

Ilesa Ilesa () is an ancient town located in the Osun State, southwest Nigeria; it is also the name of a historic kingdom (also known as Ijesha) centred on that village. The state is ruled by a monarch bearing the title of the Owa Obokun Adimula of Ij ...

, a city in what was then the

Nigeria Protectorate Colonial Nigeria was ruled by the British Empire from the mid-nineteenth century until 1960 when Nigeria achieved independence. British influence in the region began with the prohibition of slave trade to British subjects in 1807. Britain an ...

. Both of his parents, Emmanuel Dada and Rebecca Omotola Eso, belonged to prominent

chieftaincy A tribal chief or chieftain is the leader of a tribal society or chiefdom. Tribe The concept of tribe is a broadly applied concept, based on tribal concepts of societies of western Afroeurasia. Tribal societies are sometimes categorized ...

families amongst the

Ijesha The Ijesha (written as Ìjẹ̀ṣà in Yoruba orthography) are a sub-ethnicity of the Yorubas of West Africa. Ilesha is the largest town and historic cultural capital of the Ijesha people, and is home to a kingdom of the same name, ruled by a ...

s. Emmanuel's father, Chief Ifaturoti, held the

Eso The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based ast ...

chieftaincy title, and it was from this title that their family's surname was derived. He attended local schools in Nigeria before going on to

Trinity College, Dublin , name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin , motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin) , motto_lang = la , motto_English = It will last i ...

, where he obtained bachelor's and master's degrees in

Law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

with a specialization in

Legal science Legal science is one of the main components in civil law tradition (after Roman law, canon law, commercial law, and the legacy of the revolutionary period). Legal science is primarily the creation of German legal scholars of the middle and late n ...

in 1953 and 1956 respectively. He then went on to train at the Lincoln's Inn in London, where he was subsequently called to the bar.

Law career

In March 1965, he became the acting Judge of the High Court of Western Nigeria and a few years later, he was appointed to the bench of the Court of Appeal of Western Nigeria as a Justice. In January 1978, he was appointed Chief Judge of the Oyo State Judiciary, a position he held until September 1990, when he was appointed to the bench of the

. Professor Yemi Akinseye George, SAN and Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi's book, titled ''The Making of A Judge'', narrates the chronological episodes in the contemporary history of Kayode Eso's judicial activism. He is one of the members of the 8-man panel of judges at the

that presided over the

Awolowo v. Shagari case The Awolowo v. Shagari case was a lawsuit between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Alhaji Shehu Shagari in which Chief Obafemi Awolowo's petition challenged the declaration of Shehu Shagari as the president elect of the 11 August 1979, presidential elec ...

, in which Chief

Obafemi Awolowo Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo (; 6 March 1909 – 9 May 1987) was a Yoruba nationalist and Nigerian statesman who played a key role in Nigeria's independence movement (1957-1960). Awolowo founded the Yoruba nationalist group Egbe O ...

's petition challenged the declaration of Alhaji

Shehu Shagari Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari (25 February 1925 – 28 December 2018), titled Turakin Sokoto from 1962, was the first democratically elected President of Nigeria, after the transfer of power by military head of state General Olusegun Obasanjo i ...

as the president-elect of the country after the 11 August 1979 presidential election. The court ruled that "Sheu Shagari won two-thirds of the total votes cast, having polled a total tally of 16.8 million with 11.9 million votes ahead of Obafemi Awolowo who polled a total tally of 4.9 million."

Personal life

Chief Eso married Helen Aina (née Agidee) of Akungbene in 1954. They would go on to have two children together, Funmilayo Eso Williams (deceased, Feb. 2021) and Olumide Eso. Chief Eso died on 16 November 2012 at the age of 87.

Memberships

*Member,

Nigerian Bar Association The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is a non-profit, umbrella professional association of all lawyers admitted to the bar in Nigeria. It is engaged in the promotion and protection of human rights, the rule of law and good governance in Nigeria. ...

*Member,

International Bar Association The International Bar Association (IBA), founded in 1947, is a bar association of international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies. The IBA currently has a membership of more than 80,000 individual lawyers and 190 bar associa ...

*Member,

Nigerian Body of Benchers The Nigerian Body of Benchers is a professional body concerned with the admission of successful candidates at the Nigerian Law School Bar Final Examination into the Legal Proffession. Members of the body are called '' Benchers''. The body also r ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eso, Kayode 1925 births 2012 deaths Nigerian jurists People from Ilesha Yoruba legal professionals Alumni of Trinity College Dublin Supreme Court of Nigeria justices