NIGERIA STATE OF IMPUNITY, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE AND ANTI-CORRUPTION WAR – WHERE WOULD GANI HAVE STOOD?
NATIONAL CONSCIENCE PARTY OF NIGERIA
7TH GANI FAWEHINMI
MEMORIAL LECTURE
SERIES
NIGERIA STATE OF IMPUNITY, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE AND
ANTI-CORRUPTION WAR – WHERE WOULD GANI HAVE STOOD?
(Being text of paper delivered at the 7th Year Memorial
Programme for late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, LL.D, SAN, SAM, on Monday, September
5, 2016 at the International Event Centre, Igbatoro Parliament Road, Alagbaka,
Akure, Ondo State)
BY EBUN-OLU
ADEGBORUWA, ESQ.
INTRODUCTION
It is not surprising to have this discourse at this time,
when our dear country is in dire need of leadership. The heroes gone by, in times
past, had helped to guide Nigeria right, with their struggles of commitment,
selfless sacrifices and nation building.
I do humbly urge that we maintain a minute silence in honour
of Chief Gani Fawehinmi and all other heroes of our nation.
When I was approached to be the Guest Speaker for this
occasion, I felt some sense of unease, arising mainly from my personal
disenchantment with the community of activists and pro-democracy campaigners,
in regard to all the recent ugly developments in our nation, to which they have
either directly acquiesced or indirectly encouraged.
It is now seven years that Chief Gani Fawehinmi (Gani)
passed away and I believe that myself and other Nigerians miss him a lot.
WHO WAS GANI?
To be able to understand or speculate on how a person would
react in any given situation, one must at least know that person, to some
extent. So, the question then is: Who was Gani?
Gani was born as Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi, on Friday, April
22, 1938, into the family of Chief Saheed Tugbogbo Fawehinmi, the Seriki
Musulumi of Ondo and Alhaja Muniratu Fawehinmi. He was married in his lifetime
to Mrs. Ganiat Ibukun Fawehinmi and Mrs. Abike Fawehinmi, with many children
and grand children.
Gani had his early education at Ansar-Ud-Deen Primary
School, Iyemaja, Ondo, from 1947-1953 and his secondary school at Victory
College, Ikare, from 1954 to 1958. Whilst in the College, he was popularly
known as ‘Nation’ because of his passionate interest in national, legal and
political affairs of Nigeria.
In January 1959, Gani headed for Lagos and worked as a Clerk
in the High Court, Lagos. On 29th of April, 1961, Gani travelled out of Nigeria
by Sea to the United Kingdom, where he enrolled in the Holborn College of Law
for the LL.B degree of University of London (External) in 1961. He was forced,
by the circumstance of the death of his father in 1963, to drop out of the
College as a full time student and had to be engaged as Toilet Cleaner in
Russell Square Hotel in Southampton Row, London. He also combined this with the
job of Sweeper in the old Gatwick Airport, managing to complete his training.
Gani came back to Nigeria in September, 1964 and enrolled at
the Nigerian Law School, Lagos. He was called to the Nigerian Bar on 15th of
January, 1965.
He practiced briefly with his elder brother, Hon. Justice
Rasheed Fawehinmi in Ebute-Metta, before establishing his own Chambers in 1965.
In 1974, he moved his Chambers to his house in Surulere. In 1978, he finally
moved the Chambers to its permanent site in Anthony Village.
As of 2002, Gani had over 290,000 collection of law and
law-related books on various subjects, in his Chambers and had a staff strength
of about 201. The notable characteristics of his Chambers include a high sense
of responsibility to professional duties, professional ethics, dedication to
research, hardwork, truth, honesty, obedience to the rule of law and due
process, protection, defence and advancement of fundamental rights.
Between 1965 and 2002, Gani had handled about 5,700 briefs,
traversing all courts in virtually all the states of the federation. He was in
deep love with the poor and the less privileged, whose cases he handled free of
legal charges and whose causes he fought tirelessly.
Gani changed the course of legal practice in Nigeria, with
the establishment of the Nigerian Weekly Law Reports, NWLR, IN 1985. He has
also published several cases.
Gani used his knowledge and skill of law to fight societal
injustice and oppression, following which he filed and prosecuted so many cases
in court, amongst which is the famous Fawehinmi v Akilu cases, Fawehinmi v
Abacha, Fawehinmi v IGP, Fawehinmi v INEC, etc.
Gani established the National Conscience Party in 1994,
principally to rally nationwide support for the activation of the June 12, 1993
election mandate, for the entrenchment of democracy in Nigeria, to provide a
platform for genuine change in Nigeria and for the emancipation of the masses
from political, economic and socio-cultural enslavement. The NCP had the unique
motto of: Abolition of Poverty. He declared his intention to contest election
as the presidential candidate of the NCP in April 2002.
His love for the masses and less privileged led him to set
up a scholarship scheme since 1971. Every year, scholarships are awarded to
brilliant children all over Nigeria, to support their education in various
schools.
Gani suffered in the hands of the powers that be, having
been arrested and detained not less than 32 times in various police stations
and prisons across Nigeria. His passport was seized several times, his houses
and chambers searched at random and without notice, his books were confiscated
and several trumped up criminal charges were filed against him, as a way of
silencing him. He was physically assaulted on several occasions, one of which
was on Wednesday, October 20, 1999, at the Federal High Court, Lagos, when
rented political thugs attempted to kill him, but could only smash the glass of
his Pajero Jeep, on account of the case he instituted in court to compel the
Inspector-General of Police to investigate allegations of certificate forgery
and false declaration, against the former Governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola
Ahmed Tinubu.
Gani won several laurels and awards, in recognition of his
struggle for the masses, amongst which was membership of the Ghandi Foundation
in 1971, Senior Advocate of the Masses, 1988, Bruno Kriesky Award for the
defence of human rights in 1993, American Bar Association Award for human
rights in 1996 and the prestigious Bernard Simons Memorial Award by the
International Bar Association in1998. He was voted Man of the Year by several
newspapers and organisations. He was elevated to the Inner Bar as Senior
Advocate of Nigeria in September, 2001.
GANI’S PRINCIPLES
Now that we know a bit of Gani, the next thing is to know
his principles, as bench mark for determining his likely reaction to events in
Nigeria presently.
When Gani declared his presidential bid in April 2002, he launched THE 10-CARE Programme, which essential deals with:
1. Employment 2. Food Care
3. Health
Care 4. Housing Care
5. Education
Care 6. Water
Care
7. Electricity
Care 8. Transportation
Care
9. Telecoms
Care 10. Security
Care
On the platform of the NCP, Gani promised four fundamental
action points, to sanitise the Nigerian society.
1. Corruption 2. Unemployment
3. Cost of
Funds 4. Exchange Rate Mechanism
STATE OF THE NATION
To be able to discern what Gani would have done in any given
situation, it is important to examine and x-ray that situation critically. And
this necessarily leads us to the state of the Nigerian nation.
Without any doubt whatsoever, I believe that Nigerians are
now united in their opinion that the General Muhammadu Buhari regime is the
worst that Nigeria has ever experienced in its national life.
There is palpable hunger, suffering, poverty, inflation and
hopelessness, in the land, across Nigeria. It has never been this bad. Let us
look at a few examples.
In Ilorin, Kwara State, it was reported that a housewife
lamented her situation when she was cooking and went out to fetch some things
and her pot of soup had been stolen before she returned.
In Ilesha, Osun State, it was reported that a man used his
daughter to deceive a shop owner to release a bag of garri to him and abandoned
the child in the process.
In Akwa Ibom State, it was reported that a father of two
committed suicide on account of poverty and economic frustration, leaving a
suicide note, for Gen Buhari as the
cause of his death.
In Lagos last week, a middle aged man jumped into the Lagos
Lagoon, shouting Buhari, Buhari, as the reason for his attempted suicide. The
list is almost endless.
In many states of the federation presently, workers are not
paid, for months, some are being forced to combine working with farming, by
their governors, as a means of short changing them of their legitimate
salaries. As a result of this, children are being withdrawn from schools, since
their parents cannot pay their school fees, marriages are facing challenges for
lack of basic amenities.
The President does not seem to care, truly, given his
utterances and actions. He has expressed a preference for the 1984/85 period of
doom, whereby Nigerians will be forced to queue for essential commodities,
whereby dictatorship and totalitarianism will become the style of governance.
In most states presently, democratic governance in the local government system
is suspended for caretaker committees, who are nominees and stooges of the
governors. Even in Lagos State where the NCP won a court judgment compelling
the conduct of local government elections, the government has blatantly refused
to obey the judgment of the court, even where there is no order for a stay of
execution pending appeal. In the case of Lagos State, executive lawlessness
took a new dimension when the Governor, not only dared the court by disobeying
the judgment on local government elections, but proceeded to appoint new sole
administrators, after the judgment of the court, clearly in contravention of
section 7 of the 1999 Constitution.
It took the President over six months to constitute his
cabinet, as he preferred to be a lone ranger, and this eventually trickled down
to the states. In Osun State, Governor Rauf Aregbesola has been a sole
administrator for the past two years, ruling the state without a single
commissioner, no special advisers, in contravention of section 192 of the 1999
Constitution, that there must be regular meetings of the State Executive
Council, consisting of the Governor and his Commissioners. Worst still in Osun,
the Osun State House of Assembly has been romancing with the Governor as a
dictator, approving yearly budgets prepared and submitted by the Governor as a
single individual without commissioners. The Assembly in Osun even approved the
creation of LCDAs, in a state without commissioners!
This dictatorship is replicated in Oyo State and indeed in
many other States. Only last week, it was reported that the Governor of Rivers
State, sacked four of his commissioners, including the State Accountant
General, for alleged indiscipline. They all follow the body language of
dictatorship.
The present administration has great hatred and contempt for
the judiciary, whose orders and judgments are never obeyed. Since March 2014,
the Federal High Court in Lagos, declared the collection of toll fees illegal,
but the Lagos State Government has continued to collect the tolls; in 2015, the
same Federal High Court declared the restriction of movement for the monthly
environmental sanitation in Lagos State as illegal but the government has
continued to force people indoors, despite the judgment. The same Federal High
Court, had restrained the federal government from implementing the callous
electricity tariff increase, but the government has wantonly disobeyed the
order of the court and has continued to force consumers to pay the new tariff.
The judiciary generally, is under some form of siege from
the Buhari administration, as so many judges have been sacked in very
controversial circumstances, including Justice Oloyede, in Osun State, who was
booted out of office for allegedly confronting the Governor of the State.
Judges are being intimidated directly, through the agencies of government, like
the EFCC and the ICPC. It is worse for lawyers and activists alike, all of
whose life are now in great danger. Just last week, human rights lawyer, Ken
Atsuwete, was murdered in cold blood. Telephone lines of most defence lawyers
have been hacked into and bugged by the agencies of government, denying them of
any privacy, as guaranteed by the Constitution. The intolerance of the Buhari
regime climbed to the roof last month, when a young man, Fortunates Chinakwe,
was arrested, locked up and eventually arraigned in court, for daring to give a
name to his dog, that resembled the name of the President. He ended up in
prison custody and his life has been in danger, ever since.
CORRUPTION
Yes, Gen Buhari claims to be fighting corruption, as his
main programme of action. Yes again, Gani hated corruption with all his veins.
So he promised to set up a Ministry of Anti-Corruption, MAC, which will compile
the names of all past leaders, their assets and publish them publicly. So,
without any doubt, Gani would have supported the anti-corruption war of the
Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (Retd.) administration, in all its
ramifications. He held on tightly, to section 15 (5) of the 1999 Constitution
which enjoins the State to “abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of powers”.
However, Gani being a stickler for the rule of law and due
process, would have disagreed with the operational methodology of the
anti-corruption campaign, which is presently lopsided and selective. He would
have put pressure on Gen Buhari to first probe his campaign funds and all
members of his own political party who have held power in the past. By now,
Gani would have filed several cases in court to compel all public officers to
declare their assets publicly, in line with the campaign promises of the president.
And we know that the so-called fight against corruption by
the General Buhari regime, is part and parcel of the hidden agenda, to
perpetuate himself in power, beyond 2019, even in the face of his dwindling
popularity. Opponents of government, members of the opposition party, and even
business rivals of those in government, indigenes of ethnic groups different
from the ones preferred by those who are in power, are the ones that end up in
court or in custody of the agencies of government. The anti-corruption war is
simply a game of giving a dog a bad name to hang it, solely for the purpose of
frustrating the electoral fortunes of opposition candidates, who may likely
stand against those candidates of the ruling party.
The dictatorship is then extended to the Legislature, where
the leaders of parliament, who emerged contrary to the preferred candidates of
the President and his party, have been subject of criminal trials, all in an
attempt to remove them from office. The latest one is that of the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, whom we are told will now be arraigned in court,
in consequence of the incompetence of the President, who signed the
Appropriation Bill into law, after months of his acclaimed scrutiny and then
turn around to claim that it was padded. So, with the judiciary and the
legislature under lock and key, with watchers breathing down on them daily, the
atmosphere of dictatorship has finally ripened.
Let us now examine other possible ways that Gani would have
reacted to the state of our nation presently, were he to be alive today.
ECONOMY
Gani believed in a liberal transparent exchange rate policy
that is consistent. He believed that the exchange rate is determined by a
combination of corruption in the banks and in the corridors of power. He would
have kicked against the present system whereby only a few people determine the
destiny of the economy of Nigeria.
FUEL PRICE INCREASE
Without any doubt, Gani would have opposed and mobilized
Nigerians to resist the recent increase of fuel prices. He did so on all
previous occasions.
The two things that seem to determine the economy of Nigeria
are the price of petroleum products and the exchange rate of our currency. So
Gani always wanted a system that would guaranty a friendly package for all the
masses of our people. These two items determine the rate of inflation and now
that they are both out of reach of the ordinary people, Nigerians have been
thrown into unprecedented suffering, whilst our leaders go about in luxury and
opulence, in their jets and convoys. Whether we like it or not, with this
sliding exchange rate, the price of petroleum products will be increased soon.
THE POLITY
The present administration has wrecked the political
landscape of Nigeria. The electoral umpire is now INCONCLUSIVE National
Electoral Commission (INEC), as most elections are inconclusive, due mainly to
the overbearing influence of the ruling party on the agency. It has been stated
by Dr. Junaid that most of the senior officers of INEC are relatives and
adopted children of the President, over whom he has tremendous influence. Most
of the key members of the staff working in the Presidency are said to be
related to the President in one way or the other. The level of nepotism in
appointments is so great, against section 14 of the 1999 Constitution on
federal character.
Unofficially, we are in a one party state presently, with
only APC as the ruling party and at the same time the opposition. The party
that should play the role of the opposition, PDP, has been bugged with sponsored
internal crisis and most of its prominent officers have been harassed into
silence by the government, the hidden agenda being to give a soft landing to
all the candidates of the APC in all coming elections.
This can only explain the reason why the government has been
ruling as if the people do not matter. Except it has perfected the process of
its transition to power, to perpetuate itself, no reasonable government that
seeks to win a free and fair election, can proceed to be implementing the anti-people
policies of this government.
TRANSPORTATION
The manifesto of the APC talks about constructing at least
3,500 kilometres of national highways every year but no single road has been
commissioned so far. Our people die daily in avoidable road crashes.
The Kaduna-Abuja rail that was recently commissioned was a
project started by the previous administration.
Air transportation has more or less collapsed, presently,
with local airlines such as AERO, 1st Nation, etc, packing up. Flights are
cancelled abruptly or delayed unduly, due to the absence of aviation fuel and
the exchange rate has forced many foreign airlines to close shop and relocate
to other countries. The same goes for admiralty as most shipping companies have
since wound up their businesses.
EDUCATION
This is topmost priority for Gani as he devoted his life and
resources to promote education. The President had promised to feed school
children during his campaign but after the election, he has denied the helpless
pupils.
Admission into unity schools has been highly politicised,
making the expensive private schools the best option for education at that
level. University admission has become elusive, with inconsistent policies of
government. Government interference in the autonomy of the universities has
stagnated the progress of these institutions, whose governing councils are
dissolved at will, contrary to law. The universities are not funded to achieve
research and academic excellence, resulting mostly in exodus of students to
neighbouring countries such as Ghana, Kenya, South Africa.
And when students eventually graduate in the face of these
hiccups, they are confronted with unemployment, inflation and violence.
HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
The government of General Buhari has never hidden its
disdain for human rights and freedoms. It descended on armless Shiite Moslems
in Kaduna, killed thousands of their members, destroying their houses and
keeping their leaders in perpetual custody. As of today, nobody truly knows the
state of Ibrahim El-Zak Zakky, whether he is alive or dead. Amnesty
International estimated that over 3,500 members of the sect were killed and
given mass burial.
Members of the Independent Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, who were
only celebrating the anniversary of the Biafra, we felled by the bullets of
soldiers and policemen all the South East region of Nigeria. It is estimated
that over 1,000 members of IPOB have been killed on the orders of the Buhari
government.
There is pogrom going on in the Niger-Delta region
presently, where soldiers have taken over virtually all the streets and homes
of their leaders, all in an attempt to silence the agitation for resource
control. The police stations across the country are filled with citizens who
have been arrested on charges relating to civil disputes on land, commercial
transactions and landlord and tenant. The Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, EFCC, has become a tool of oppression of all opposition voices in
the land, where suspects are denied bail, to the extent that some of them die
in the custody of the agency.
Gani would not have tolerated such wanton disregard for
peoples’ rights and freedoms, which has characterised the Buhari
administration, since its inception, even up till this moment.
GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY
Without any doubt, Gani would have called for a broad based
government of national unity, wherein all talented and experienced Nigerians,
would be encouraged to contribute to our national development, given that the
APC led government has more or less loss its sense of direction, thereby
running the economy aground.
Gani would have mobilized the human rights community and
civil society and labour to embark upon peaceful protests, all over the land,
to reject the poverty and suffering that this government has imposed upon the
people of Nigeria.
We can no longer leave our national destinies in the hands
of the politicians alone, we must all come together and rescue our land from
predators, promise breakers and clueless leaders.
RESTRUCTURING
Upon the establishment of the Government of National Unity,
Gani would have advocated for proper restructuring of Nigeria, into a proper
federation, with the devolution of power to the regions and the local
governments. With Gani, the courts would have been agog with myriad of cases on
the countless acts of impunity that we have been forced to put up with in this
country.
Adieu, Gani, for Nigeria can never have another gadfly,
another stormy petrel, another enigma, like you.
Gani’s personal motto, which he published boldly in his
chambers, was:
“Stand up for what is right, even if you stand alone.”
Adieu Gani, and all our past heroes.
Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, Esq.
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