The Nigeria Law School called 41-year-old Rasheedat Adeshina to the bar on July 29, 2021 — capping a 26-year journey that began when she first set foot on a Nigerian university campus.

Adeshina, who gained admission to the University of Ilorin in 1995 to study Industrial Chemistry, spent 14 years in court fighting the institution for her degree.

The Supreme Court ruled in her favour on June 6, 2014, but her certificate carried the 2014/2015 session — 19 years after she first enrolled.

The battle began in 1998 when Vice Chancellor Professor Shuaib Abdulraheem Oba banned the students’ union and introduced an astronomical hike in school fees. Students protested peacefully with support from the National Association of Nigerian Students. The Abacha regime backed the university’s brutal crackdown. Many students were arrested and imprisoned at Oke Kura Maximum Security Prison in Ilorin for 36 days.

Adeshina escaped the clampdown. The regime declared her wanted, and national newspapers published her name. She went underground. Suspension followed.

“I could only imagine the trauma this had on my parents,” Adeshina said of that period.

She challenged her suspension at the Federal High Court in Ilorin and won. But the university refused to comply. She returned to court for a committal order — Forms 48 and 49 — before she could sit for exams.

“It was such a very difficult period; you will have exam the following day and won’t be sure you will be allowed: whether to read and not to merely waste your time,” she recalled. “Whenever I had an exam, I would go into the exam hall with the court order. My final year examination in the year 2000 started and ended in this manner. Whenever anybody tried to stop me from writing exams, I would take out the court order and asked the person to sign that he/she was disobeying the court order.”

The university refused to release her results and certificate. She returned to the Federal High Court in 2004 and won the following year. UNILORIN appealed. The Court of Appeal ruled in her favour in 2006, stating that “bias can be reasonably inferred from the intransigence of the appellant.” The university appealed again — this time to the Supreme Court.

Before the apex court, UNILORIN assembled a formidable team of 10 lawyers led by Yusuf Alli, SAN. They claimed Adeshina had outstanding courses and had failed a compulsory one, ICH209. But the university could not produce the list of courses she allegedly missed nor evidence that she failed any examination or practical course.

Worse for the university, Adeshina produced a June 11, 2001 letter — Ref No.VCO/131.S.I — personally signed by Vice Chancellor Oba stating the institution was withholding her results because she challenged “the competence of the University to discipline” her for “criminal offences.”

Justice Kumai Bayang Akaahs, reading the lead judgment, said the university was engaged in “an unnecessary show of power.” The Supreme Court dismissed UNILORIN’s appeal entirely and awarded Adeshina N5 million in damages.

“It is the practice the world over that where a student sits for an examination or completes a course he or she is entitled to know the outcome of that examination,” the court stated.

In 2010 — 10 years after graduating without a certificate — Adeshina decided to return to school. She chose law at the University of Ibadan.

“The only course of study that came to my mind then was law. This was not accidental, because I have been in and out of courts and law chambers throughout my stay in the University of Ilorin,” she explained.

To switch from pure science to arts, she wrote another GCE examination in 2011, then JAMB and Post-UTME the following year before being admitted into UI for the 2013/14 session.

She fought her legal battles pro bono with lawyers including Segun Sango Aderemi, John Olusola Baiyeshea, SAN, and Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika, SAN, of Citipoint Chambers. Olumide-Fusika described the Supreme Court judgment as a landmark decision, noting that “the court is always reluctant to decide over matters involving whether students should be given certificates or not but in this instance because of the peculiar circumstance of the case, the court had no other choice than to make an exception to that rule.”

Married since 2002 with three sons, Adeshina now holds both a degree in Industrial Chemistry — earned 19 years after admission — and a law degree.

“For Rasheedat who got married in 2002 and has three sons, the struggle for the emancipation of Nigeria continues, and is certain of ultimate victory over the forces of darkness, backwardness and barbarism,” journalist Owei Lakemfa wrote in a widely circulated account of her ordeal.