Foreword

• Date: 07 September 2019

FOREWORD

I had followed the exploits of Deji Sasegbon, Esq. S.A.N. in the area of legal education

with keen interest for many years and was very saddened when his albeit eventful life

came to an untimely end in December 2016. It was also painful to contemplate the

very idea that the legal profession would be robbed of its most trusted source of legal

scholarship and essential tools for practice.

I was therefore, most gratified when I was approached to write this foreword on yet

another very important publication from the stables of DSC Publications Ltd, being the

last work of that great man! There can be no better tribute to him than this; to ensure

that this parting gift gets to the legal profession and to all persons interested in legal

theory. This is more so, where the work in question is one that transverses all areas of

law as we know and practice it—the meaning and explanations of words, phrases and

terminologies, especially from the view point of the courts who decide what indeed,

the law is, when confronted with divergent views of counsel. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Jr. opined in 1897: “the prophecies of what the courts will do in fact and nothing more

pretentious, is what I mean by Law”.

Many industrious members of our profession in Nigeria have at various times, assisted

the legal profession by the publication of various legal resource and explanatory material

for which the profession must be grateful. Here however, comes the most

comprehensive and all-encompassing material of them all. With the exception of few

laudable publications of rather recent origin, most dictionaries in frequent use in Nigeria

are of foreign origin.

Sasegbon’s Judicial Dictionary of Nigerian Law combines the scope, style and essence

of them all. Planned in seven volumes, the first 6 volumes are dedicated to judge

rendered definitions through over 13,000 decided cases of the superior courts of record.

Recurrent terms in litigation as they were dealt with by learned jurists are all brought

together in these serial volumes. So also, are words used in statutes that have had to be

dealt with by learned judges in contested cases. In all, the terms, phrases and words

considered have been drawn from over 12,000 Statutes.

The seventh volume is the one in which the learned author had brought to bear his

broad expertise as a legal thinker who found his niche through forensic practice of

law, beginning from his days as a law officer in the Ministry of Justice and through his

versatile work as legal researcher, publisher and advocate of great repute. There is no

doubt that these volumes will serve as great enhancers and companion adjuncts to

Sasegbon’s other seminal works to the great benefit of all who must play in any part of

the legal field for many years to come.