Meet the grandpa who was called to the Nigerian bar at 80. He is the oldest in Nigeria’s history to ever graduate from the Nigerian Law School.

Pius Chuka Enebeli made history on the 14th of July, 2016, as he became the oldest new wig ever produced by the Nigerian Law School. According to DailyTrust, Enebeli, is from Aboh, Delta State and retired as a postal officer at the then Post and Telegraphs (P&T), before going back to school to study law. He plans to go into active advocacy.

He said he was inspired by his secondary school teacher to study law.

Enebeli said: “One of the things that made me study Law is that ordinarily, people have been telling me that from the way I discuss, from the way I reason, that why don’t I read Law? But there’s an anecdote to illustrate why I proceeded to read Law at my age.

“Sometime in 1956, when I was in DMGS Onitsha, we were supposed to be doing Igbo Language and Latin in those days and I was good at both. But there was a classmate of mine who is Isoko, who was regularly excused during both classes. So one day, maybe out of childishness, I felt that being a Delta man, too, I should be relaxing too. I pulled my seat back a little to stay with him, when the tutor came in. He was annoyed seeing me staying in that position.

“Now, the tutor had already got his intermediate LLB from London University because no university in Nigeria had a Law faculty, and he was preparing seriously for his LLB finals. So he asked me, ‘Mr. Enebeli, why aren’t you in my class?’ So, I got up and said, ‘Sir, please define the extent of your class’. He was embarrassed, because the logic behind it is a legal thing, and he didn’t know what to do. Then he said ‘Mr. Enebeli, you are entering into the field I know better’. After that, he said I should see him after school.

“After school, I went to him and he offered me bananas which I ate like it was a condemned prisoner’s meal. He later came and sat with me, and asked whether my parents could send me to the university to study Law. But I said my parents don’t have any money, and it pained him so much. He went into his room and presented me a novel entitled ‘John Citizen and the Law’. The book gave me tremendous inspiration.

“Fast-forward many decades later, after enjoying myself as a civil servant, it occurred to me that somebody once told me that I would do well studying Law. That’s why I decided to do it.”