A Vital Obiter on the profession that swore it had no gender

They taught us in the Law School that ours is a genderless profession.

Like the media, we were told. A calling that knows neither male nor female. The law sees only the lawyer, only the learned friend, only the mind.

A fine sermon. I believed it for a while.

Then I began to notice how we actually address ourselves.

We are the gentlemen of the Bar, the way they are the gentlemen of the press. Nobody rises to speak of the women of the press. And in the very same Law School that assured us the profession is blind to gender, the male students were quietly warned: yes, you may call a female judge “My Lady,” but say it carefully. Do not let it fall from your mouth sounding amorous. Do not incur the wrath of Their Ladyships on the Bench.

So the profession was genderless, but only the men had to watch their tone. Curious kind of genderlessness.

I remember my court attachment, back home in Ondo. There is a festival in those parts for the twins, Odunmoko. That year it fell on a Monday, and on the Friday before, our judge, a woman, called us students to say she would not be sitting on Monday on account of the festival, during which the women are kept from going out.

Mischief got the better of me. “But Ma,” I said, “there is no female in this profession. The profession knows neither male nor female.”

She looked at me, knew exactly what I was doing, and said, jocularly, “Will you get out of my chambers?”

We both laughed. But the joke was on the doctrine, not on her.

Now look at Nigeria today.

The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, on the seat since August 2024 is a woman.

The President of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, there since 2020 is a woman.

The Director-General of the Nigerian Law School, Dr. Olugbemisola Odusote, who took office in January 2026 as the first woman to hold the post since the School was founded in 1962 is a woman.

And now the Nigerian Bar Association has elected Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya as its next President, only the second woman to lead the Bar since Chief (Mrs.) Priscilla Kuye held that office in 1991.

Four corners of this profession. Bench, appellate Bench, the training ground, and the Bar itself. All of them, at this hour, in the hands of women.

So I ask, in the gentlest obiter: is this not a case of the stone the builders rejected becoming the chief cornerstone?

For if the profession were truly genderless, if it truly saw no man and no woman, we would have had no reason to marvel. The marvel itself is the confession. We notice because, for so long, the “genderless” robe was cut to a man’s measurements. The neutrality was a decoy. It covered a house that leaned, quietly, one way.

Perhaps it is time to retire the pretty fiction. Not to say there is neither male nor female, but to say, at last and out loud, that there is both. And that today, the daughters of the profession are holding the roof.

But what do I know?

I am only a roving counsel.

This has been my Vital Obiter.

Have a good day.