Steve Aya
The Nigerian legal and academic community has recorded another painful loss with the demise of a distinguished law teacher, Professor Mathew Chucks Okpaluba.
A statement by his family said ‘Prof Okpaluba lived a life of legal scholarship, teaching and service.
‘His demise marks the passing of one of the most distinguished legal scholars of his generation’.
‘Born in 1942, he began his legal studies during a formative period in the evolution of post-colonial African legal systems.
‘It was against this rich and varied intellectual background, that Professor Okpaluba began to establish the academic career for which he would become so widely respected.
‘His appointment to the University of the West Indies marked an important early stage in that career, where he played a significant role in establishing and building the reputation of its Faculty of Law.
In 1978, he returned to Africa, subsequently holding professorial appointments in Nigeria, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Lesotho and South Africa.
‘Professor Okpaluba’s academic career was remarkable, both for its longevity and its geographical reach. His education across three legal traditions, the English common law, the Caribbean experience and the developing jurisprudence of post-independence Africa, provided the comparative perspective that became a defining characteristic of his teaching and scholarship.’
Prof Okpaluba’s academic career spanned more than four decades, and he established himself as one of Africa’s foremost authorities on constitutional law, administrative law, labour law, social security law, jurisprudence and human rights.
His work consistently emphasised legality, procedural fairness, rational decision-making and judicial accountability. His early academic research was in this field, and his doctoral thesis at the University of the West Indies, was written on labour law. His first book, published in 1975, addressed collective bargaining in the Caribbean.
At the time of his passing, that the forthcoming publication of his on labour law, written with Professor M Budeli-Nemokonde, ‘Remedies of Unfair Dismissal in Contemporary South African Labour Law: Reinstatement, Re-employment and Compensation’ was being published. Some of his students went on to distinguished careers as Judges, senior advocates, academics and public officials across Africa.