Born of English parents on May 29, 1923 at Gravesend, Kent in England,
Adunola Oguntoye knows no other home than Nigeria. Although she served
in the Royal Air force with her late husband, Chief David Ojo Abiodun
Oguntoye, during World War II, she was determined to spend the rest of
her life where the ‘land is green’. Shortly after the war, she enrolled
for Law at the Middle Temple Inns of Court. In 1960, she renounced her
British Citizenship in order to serve her country, Nigeria. Having
served with Oguntoye & Oguntoye, a law firm established with her
late husband, she joined the Western Region Magistracy in 1961. Justice
Oguntoye later moved to Lagos in 1967 as Chief Magistrate. She held this
position for nine years before her appointment as a Judge of the Lagos
State High Court in February 1976. Thus, she became the 1st woman on the
Lagos State Bench and the 2nd woman to become a Judge in Nigeria after
Justice Modupe Omo-Eboh who was appointed a Judge in 1975 in the old
Mid-Western region. In 1978, she sought to be transferred to the newly
created Oyo state and finally retired from the bench in 1988. Justice
Oguntoye was honoured deservedly as an Officer of the Federal Republic
in 1978 by then Head of State Olusegun Obasanjo. Last week Jude Igbanoi
and Yinka Olatunbosun sat with this lady of charisma at the Eko Hotel
and Suites just a few hours before the birthday dinner held by the Lagos
State Judiciary in her honour, as she went down memory lane on her six
decades in Nigeria…
Unconditional Love…
Mixed race marriages have been a subject of international suspicion.
When an African man marries a Caucasian, it is often suggested that the
man needed the marriage as a mere requirement in legitimising his stay
in a foreign land. Many of these marriages fail while few others are
willfully terminated. Justice Oguntoye’s marriage to a Nigerian was not
founded on such frivolity. She married a man whom she is proud to say
was the first lawyer in Ijeshaland.
Her face still glows when she talks about her late husband. She was
fondly christened ‘Adunola’ by her husband, a name which is a hybrid of
Dulcie meaning ‘sweetness’ and Ethel meaning ‘noble’. Adunola thus means
the sweetness of nobility.
At a time when racism was stiff and brazenly perpetrated in Europe,
Justice Oguntoye could not bear the sight of her fellow countrymen
throwing rude racial abuses at her heartthrob while she walked with him
on the street. For her, it was heartrending. When she arrived in
Nigeria, she discovered that when young children called out at her
‘Oyinbo’, it was out of admiration and not a bi-product of racial
discrimination. She felt at home. Several years later, she was honoured
as the Iyalode of Imesi-Ile.
She spoke further on how she met the man who touched her life in totality.
‘He was a pilot navigator and I was what we called the Equipment
Assistant. It was after the war in Europe ended that we met and we
actually got out of the airport. That’s how we met and everything
followed from that.’
Everything included her marriage becoming more accommodating. Her
husband married five wives after. He had prepared her for this when he
told her that in Africa, before Europeans brought Christianity to
Nigeria, men could marry as many wives as they could. He however assured
her that she would be the Queen of the other wives. She has since
remained a worthy Queen, adored by those wives and their children.
‘When I married, it was for better or worse. Although, my husband has
gone, my family is here and I had to be with my country, and for that I
am very thankful.
‘I have been fortunate to have had an interest in a Nigerian. I came
over here and settled with him and he had interest in my life and
interest in my career. I have been very fortunate!’
Her recollection of time and dates is astonishing. When asked what her
experience had been for the past sixty years in Nigeria, she promptly
corrected that it was ‘59 years and a few weeks; almost 60 years!’
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