•‘Gani’s legacy intact’
Ondo State Governor Olusegun Mimiko at the weekend urged President Muhammadu Buhari to initiate a well-defined economic policy.
He advised the Federal Government to pursue its privatisation policy with the aim of interest to promoting the interest of the masses.
Mimiko spoke during the sixth Gani Fawehinmi Annual Memorial Lecture and Tribute at the Cultural Centre, Akure.
The event was attended by dignitaries and human rights’ activists who included the former Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, the National Chairman, National Conscience Party (NCP), Dr. Tanko Yinusa and the Chairman of the Gani Fawehinmi Memorial Organisation, Comrade Ayodele Akele.
The governor said the President should pursue his anti-corruption crusade without favouritism or intimidation.
Mimiko, who enjoined the President Buhari-led government to fashion out a clearly defined economic policy said his administration would fight poverty through its Caring Heart programmes of qualitative education, healthcare and urban renewal.
He extolled the virtues of Fawehinmi, saying he left behind an indelible legacy.
According to him, Fawehinmi’s core essence was to uphold human rights, liberate the masses and use the instrumentality of power to lift them from poverty.
He said his administration embarked on programmes aimed at liberating the people from poverty by giving equal access to the children and wives of the rich and the poor.
The governor said: “The children of the privileged and the less privileged learn under the same roof in our mega schools. People have transferred their children and wards from private primary schools to our public mega schools.
“The wives of the privileged lie side by side in the same ward with the wives of the poor because they cannot get such better service elsewhere.”
He stressed the need for public servants to demonstrate capacity and reinvent themselves for service delivery.
In his lecture, entitled: ‘Socio-economic Challenges in the Contemporary Nigeria’ a human rights activist, Mr. Femi Aborisade, attributed poverty to politics.
He said: “Poverty can only be abolished by politics. Buhari needs to fulfil his campaign promises as encapsulated in his ‘covenant with Nigerians’”.
Aborisade urged the Federal Government to rename the headquarters of the National Human Rights Commission after Gani Fawehinmi and establish a Freedom Square in Abuja in his honour.
The chairman of the occasion, Musa, described the late legal icon as an energetic and a patriotic Nigerian, who devoted his life to the Nigerian project and liberty of the masses.