By CHIDI OBINECHE

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He is a Senior Advocate Of Nigeria, SAN, a professor of law and head of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti- Corruption, PPAC.
From his days at the University of Benin, he has been a storm trooper, a maelstrom swimmer, the main reason he was chunked out of the ivory tower.
But he has not been out in the cold. In his private law practice he embraced the eerie warmth of activism, pulsating in limelight most of the time.
On his heady job as corrupt practices marksman he has been courting the swathing steeliness of brusque interventions, sometimes setting tongues wagging in his advocacy of extra-constitutional help in the fight against corruption. A stunning turnaround came last Tuesday when he asked the Federal Government to obey court orders regarding the detention of embattled former National Security Adviser, Col Sambo Dasuki, retd; and the leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakizaki. He advised the Federal Government to either obey the court order by immediately releasing them or to appeal the orders. “The court orders should be obeyed and I don’t know what reason the government has for not releasing them. If they have good reasons, they should canvass the reasons before the court and leave the court to decide.
“If the court rules against them, then they should appeal against the ruling and then apply for stay of the ruling pending the appeal. That is what the government should do rather than detaining them perpetually.”
Sometimes, forthrightness is found in unlikely places. By this admonition which no member of Buhari’s cabinet or even fans of the government have never ever dredged up courage and candour to say, the cloud of incipient primordial hangover may be subtly giving way to a new dawn of hope. No one would have thought that the jagged pieces of impudent rationalizations of putrescence and shocking endorsement of base desecrations of constitutional democratic tenets will fit this puzzle.
Dave Mathews, an American writer and researcher, reckoned more than two decades ago that “Nothing is black or white, nothing’s ‘us or them’. But then there are magical, beautiful things in the world. There’s an incredible act of kindness and bravery, and in the most unlikely places, and it gives hope’’.  Gripped by  emotion and hysteria, an emerging standard of approbation and condemnation  have dimmed  and defined  the pursuit of the common good and by extension  the phenomenal payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating and religion.
He was born on December 20, 1940, in Ibadan, Oyo State of Nigeria. He is an indigene of Delta State.. He attended Government College, Ugheli, Delta State from September 1954 to December 1959.
After first working as a Customs Clerk and later as a Programmes  Operator (Studio Manager) in the then Nigerian  Broadcasting  Corporation, Ikoyi for about  three years, he got admission as a member of the first batch of students into the Faculty of Law, University of Ife in September  1962, where he graduated with Second Class Upper Division in the year 1965. He proceeded to the Nigerian Law School for his professional training and was called to the bar in July 1966. Between 1966 and 1970, he was a student at Kings, College, Cambridge University, England.
He obtained Masters (LLM) degree in International Law in 1968. In 1970, he qualified and was awarded Ph.D in International Law from the same University. He became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in September 1998, and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in 2002.
On September 1, 1999, he became a professor of Law at the University of Ife and later became the Dean of the Faculty in September 1981. In November 1982, he became the Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Benin, Edo State. In the year 1988, Sagay founded and remains  the Managing Partner, Itse Sagay and Co, Legal Practitioners and Consultants.