Just about everyone who plays golf knows it by heart that the game is one of great tradition, of high ideals, of sportsmanship, one in which a strict adherence to the rules is essential.
For a moment, you will think Justice Ibrahim Auta, the Law Godzilla, who recently retired as the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, joined golf for those great values earlier enumerated. But things just got deeper here. This model of strength, fortitude and dignity simply joined because he didn’t want to develop a pile as it was rampant among judges of his time.
Auta is gentle. He appears inscrutable and unrelenting, yet he’s a brave man with such resilience. In a group of distinguished men, he stands out as peerless. Auta cuts the clean line of an athlete. For sure he’s one. He started with basketball. He was such a good Guard that he made the national team in 1974. He indeed featured in three Nigerian University Games. He has three gold medals to show for it. Such was his love for basketball that when he was a magistrate, he would pack boys in his car and go for a game.
But he would soon cross out basketball. This was at the point when he had outgrown moving around with the boys. To fill the gap, he chose squash. Why? He loves sports that keep the adrenaline at the boiling point. He offered a little smile. His eyes suddenly became languid, softly serene. Then, clearly, you see this sense of peace, another angle to dignity and grace about him that was almost eerie. Then he asserted: “In those days, the blood was hot.”
In 1980, when Justice Auta arrived in Lagos to work directly with the late President Shehu Shagari, he came fully into squash and plays the game to this day. At that point, he saw golf from afar, but most of his friends were playing the game. He was merely mocking them. He thought golf was not fast enough… not something that could get your blood on the boil. Little did he know that golf was not only energetic but equally unpredictable and playfully aggressive.
After life with Shagari, Auta would soon find himself in Calabar. It was here that his interest in the game began, but he wasn’t really playing much for lack of time. Soon, he moved to Kano but he did not have friends who were playing golf. Same thing happened when he came to Lagos. But at the time he moved to Abuja, his bosom friend, the Chief Judge of Abuja Court, Justice Lawal Gumi, indeed pushed him to play.
Eyes shining with a gentle constancy, Auta reeled off: “For years, I’ve not had time to play the game. But in the year 2000, when I came to Benin, there was no way I could have moved away from the game … look at my house, look at the golf course. Besides, since 1998 I acquired a brand-new golf set which I just abandoned, and I became really tempted. But I still played my squash between 7pm and 8pm daily.
“Then I found out that I was putting on weight. The thing is I needed to cut down on my weight. So instead of retiring to bed after work, I took on golf bigtime. It was then I discovered that golf was a real form of exercise. I mean, through a round, you must have walked some eight kilometres.
“As a judge, that is great for me. You know, judges sit a lot. In the courtroom, they are sitting. In the car, they are sitting. That is why most of them have pile. But with golf, I don’t fall into this problem. You can see I look young.”
Well, for someone born in 1952 in Jos, though he’s from Borno State, he’s quite not looking his age. But which athlete ever looks his age? “Golf has contributed to my staying young”, he maintained. “I’m indeed grateful I came into the game. Without any doubt, my perception about the game has changed. Before now, I thought golf was a lazy man’s game and that it is a game for only those who can afford it. This perception is totally wrong.”
