Bolaji Ramos

Bolaji S. Ramos is a Nigerian poet, writer, analyst and lawyer. Quotes My entire life was Mount Everest, hovering over my head, but already sliced into halves by the hanging and dangling Sword of Damocles. The first half was my ‘poetic calling’, a solitary journey that began unplanned in the year 2000 as mere written thoughts about love, longing and loss. The other half, a ‘legal calling’— a conscious decision I made sometime in 2003 that only materialized in 2005/2006 when I eventually enrolled for a law degree in the University of Lagos. By the first quarter of 2006, my life had already become an obvious manifestation of two interests (poetic calling v. legal calling), respectively seeking a bigger space in my life. I, too, like Robert Frost, had two roads diverged in the (green, not yellow) wood, but, unlike Frost, I continued to travel both at once like a bigamist. Yes. I travelled the rocky and romantic road of poetry and the luring and lonesome road of law till I graduated in 2010, called to the bar in 2011 after rounding off in the Law School and started active legal practice in 2012. My own Season of Migration to the North was fully manifested in 2012. Though, I did not play Tayeb Salih’s Mustafa Sa’eed in the North as I was not on a vengeance mission of hymen-rupturing, Sa’eed and I have more than a thing in common— we are both poets and we both journeyed to the North. The North of Nigeria was a completely different terrain for me. Having spent all my life in Lagos, I had to adjust to the geography, the sociology and the psychology of the peoples in the North between October 2010 and October 2012, with a few visits to Lagos in between. A Chief Magistrate. Two experienced senior lawyers. A new wig. Four witnesses. And the litigants in the courtroom. These were the characters. I was the new wig, standing in defence of the Defendant, and up against two experienced senior lawyers representing the Plaintiffs. They had brought the four witnesses in support of their case. I was alone like Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper, waiting to be devoured by the Plaintiff’s legal team. I too, like the solitary Highland Lass, was harvesting grains to be planted in the mind of the Chief Magistrate, so that the proceedings of the day could be adjourned on grounds that I was not ready and my Principal who was conducting the case would come on the next adjourned date to deal with it. The Defendant. Chidinma. Gloria. Me. These were the characters. The distressed and confused Defendant had stormed into our office that morning, requesting to see our Principal, who did not tell us his whereabouts. The Defendant had rushed down to our office from the nearby court to inform our Principal that his case, which our Principal had agreed to conduct for him, was about to be called. All attempts by the Defendant to reach our Principal proved abortive. In that state of confusion for everybody, Chidinma and Gloria (my colleagues and fellow new wigs) started convincing me (supposedly as the best on ground) to go and fill in for our Principal who had told me a day earlier that he was travelling. I agreed. The plan was to tell court the truth— our Principal travelling and I knew nothing about the case.