Ondo State governor, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, yesterday commiserated with the family of the Chairman, State Muslims Pilgrimage Welfare Board, Alhaji Khaleel Fawehinmi, over the death of his wife, Alhaja Abimbola Fawehinmi.
Akeredolu also sent his condolences to the Adako family of Iyere Owo over the death of their father, Chief Koya Adako.
The late Alhaja Fawehinmi was a Commissioner for Women Affairs and later Commissioner for Education in Ondo State between 1997 and 1999.
ACTIVISTS on the platform of Gani Fawehinmi Memorial Organisation (GAFAMORG) have reiterated their request to the Federal Government to immortalise the late constitutional human right lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi.
Addressing a news conference in Lagos yesterday to announce programmes for the Seventh Chief Gani Fawehinmi Memorial programmes, GAFAMORG’s chairman, Mr. Ayodele Akele, urged government to rename the headquarters of the National Human Rights Commission, Abuja as Gani Fawehinmi Human Rights House.
Alternatively, he suggested that the establishment of Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Square in Abuja, where aggrieved Nigerians, non-governmental organisation (NGOs) activists and others can gather peacefully to protest and ventilate their views on government actions.
Akele, who led other activists, said the organisation would continue to fight for democratic rights of the masses against anti-masses economic programmes and for system change.
He said it was imperative for them “to continue to remember Gani Fawehinmi with those things that he would have done, battles he would have fought on behalf of the masses, the several articles he would have written challenging the unjust decisions of the government and condemning the travails to which the masses are being subjected to”.
The GAFAMORG chairman said the memorial programme will take off today with a memorial road show, procession and a rally from under the bridge in Ikeja and terminate at Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Square, Ojota.
He said there will be another procession and candle light and laying of wreaths at Fawehinmi’s tomb in his home country, Oka Street, Ondo town on Sunday.
He said the public lecture is slated for Monday to coincide with the day the late fiery lawyer died and will hold at the International Event Centre, Igbatoro road, Ondo.
He said this year’s lecture with the theme “The State of Nigeria: Impunity, Human Rights Abuse, Anti-Corruption war etc., where would Gani have stood”, will be delivered by activist , Mr. Ebun Adegboruwa.
Former Kaduna State Governor Balarabe Musa will chair the occasion.
No fewer than 40 indigent undergraduates have been awarded Gani Fawehinmi Scholarship Awards.
In a lecture titled: “The Law, the Lawyer and the Public Spirit: Gani Fawehinmi in Historical Perspective”, delivered at the award ceremony held last week, Professor Ademola Popoola of the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, decried the continuous falling standard of education in the country.
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Popoola who spoke on issues affecting the education sector in Nigeria, at the event, which held at the late Fawehinmi’s Nigerian Law Publication House, Otunba Jobi Fele Way, CBD, Alausa, Ikeja, said anyone who has the interest of Nigeria at heart cannot but share the late Fawehinmi’s passion for education.
The late Fawehinmi, according to him, beleived education to be the bedrock of sustainable national development and the pivot of progress.
He said the problems of Nigeria’s educational system are legion, adding that access to it, funding, governance, quality and relevance are more telling.
“It is indeed, a sad commentary that in 2014, education, in the appropriate metaphor of Professor S.O Awokoya, is still “The Crisis Child of Our Time”.
“The percentages of failure recorded in the past four years ranged from 75.06 per cent in 2010, 44.66 per cent in 2011, 61.19 per cent in 2012 and 35.74 per cent in 2013, up to a whopping 70 per cent in 2014,” he said.
According to the Law Professor, what the falling standard portends for the country includes threat to the hopes and aspirations of the youths, who are the future and bedrock for any effective and sustainable development.
“Regrettably, in most developing and underdeveloped countries of the world, including Nigeria where corruption, abject poverty, unemployment and disease have assumed a frightening dimension, the youth have become endangered species with bleak and uncertain future,” he said.
The don commended the late Fawehinmi for his initiative in addressing some aspects of the crisis of education at the individual level. He blamed the crisis on long years of neglect, mal-administration and policy somersaults.
“The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi had passion for education as he had for Law. In his life time, he meant many things to many people. Even in death, the memory of him and his good deeds is indelibly etched in the hearts of his teeming compatriots, particularly the down-trodden and the oppressed, whose lives he had touched in a lasting and remarkable way,” he said.
Prof Popoola said the Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM) conferred on Chief Gani Fawehinmi long before he became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) was not by accident.
The late Fawehinmi, according to him, was the only recipient of such title, adding that any other claim to the title of SAM is fake and should be ignored.
Dr. Dipo Fashina, who chaired the Gani Fawehinmi Scholarship Awards Board, said the number of recipients was reviewed upward from 20 in 2012 to 40 this year because the award was not given last year due to incessant strike of the tertiary institutions across the country.
The number of recipients, he noted, may be increased in the future as the need arises.
Dr. Fashina, a former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU) said the late Fawehinmi was concerned about Nigerian children who were very brilliant, but indigent.
“There was another thing the late Chief Fawehinmi was concerned about, the disparities in the distribution of education in Nigeria. That there must be a reflection of the fact that there are bright students all over Nigeria,” Fashina said
Over 1,000 students have so far been empowered through scholarship since the awards begun in 1973 by the Gani Fawehinmi Scholarship Awards Board.
The Gani Fawehinmi yearly scholarship interview for the Southwest zone will hold on September 9, at the Nigerian Publications House, Otunba Jobi Fele Way, Alausa, Ikeja by 10a.m.
A statement by the Chairman and Secretary of the scholarship board, Dr. Dipo Fashina and Ugwuzor Adindu said the interview was decentralised to make it accessible to indigent students for which it was meant.
The board stated that 40 students are to benefit in this year’s awards and each of them will receive N100,000.
It advised brilliant indigent students in tertiary institutions that are yet to apply to do so.
Lawyers in Lagos will tomorrow embark on a ‘Freedom Walk” as part of activities marking the 10th anniversary of the Gani Fawehinmi Annual Lecture.
The walk is in honour the late activist and constitutional lawyer for his contributions to the Bar’s development.
Chairman, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja Branch Mr. Monday Ubani said the walk would take off from Motorway Centre, Seven Up, Alausa Ikeja, near the old toll gate at 6.00 a.m. and end at Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Square at Ojota.
He said the exercise, the first since the yearly lecture started 10 years ago, was in honour of the late Fawehinmi. It was planned to precede the lecture scheduled for the same day at the Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja at 10.00 a.m.
According to him, the late Fawehinmi, who he likened to Nelson Mandela, embarked on many ‘Freedom Walks’ before addressing the masses.
“The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi represented freedom for the masses. He was a man of the people and any opportunity he has to address them, he was always urging the masses to free themselves from those who are oppressing them in government by fighting for their right”.
Ubani said the gathering of lawyers and other lovers of freedom would be addressed by notable activists, including Mr. Paul Ananaba (SAN), Bamidele Aturu, and Niyi Idowu.
Ubani said the former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami (rtd.), has accepted to chair the lecture, which will be delivered by the Founder of the Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare.
Ondo State Governor Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, who is the Special Guest of Honour, will deliver the keynote address.
The Special Guests of honour include the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Justice Ayotunde Phillips, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka and former Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa.
He said Lagos State Governor Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola will be the Chief Host at the event.
A lecture has been held at the Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, in honour of the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN). ADEBISI ONANUGA was there.
The spirit of the late human rights crusader and constitutional lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehnmi (SAN), came alive in Lagos at his ninth yearly lecture / symposium entitled: Fawehinmiism.
At the event, eminent Nigerians took turns to eugolise the late Fawehinmi’s contribution to the development of the economy and his political and human rights crusades. The symposium’s theme was: “Economy, politics and human rights: whither Nigeria”
The speakers described Gani as a selfless lawyer , and the best ever, who gave his life for the course of the masses.
They, stressed the need for national re-birth that will guarantee the development of human rights in order to keep alive the late crusader’s struggle.
Dignitaries at the event, cut across social strata.
Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN), by the Solicitor-Genneral, Mr Lawal Pedro (SAN), his Ogun State counterpact represented by the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr Wemimo Ogunde (SAN), the Executive Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof Chidi Odinkalu, human rights activisit, Chief Abiodun Owonikoko (SAN); Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, Lagos State Chief Judge, Justice Ayotunde Phillips, Senior Advocates of Nigeria such as Ebun Sofunde, Femi Falana, Emeka Ngige, Augustine Alegeh, Niyi Akintola, Tayo Oyetibo and Dele Adesina, among others.
There was also the Resident Electoral commissioner for Cross Rivers State, Mike Igini; former commissioner in Lagos State, Dr Muiz Banire and Mazi Okechukwu Unegbu, among other.
They noted that bad economy, high poverty level and the high crime rate are inter related issues at the front burner of national discourse today and that attempts to provide answers to them amounted to digging at the foundation of Nigeria’s problems and thereby bringing the nation to the point of national rebirth.
The Chairman of NBA, Ikeja Branch, Mr Monday Ubani, said in his welcome address that, the late Fawehinmi was still angry from his grave that the problems of the country that truly facilitated his demise, instead of abating are growing daily.
According to him, every decent Nigerian will feel appalled at the rate the country had moved politically and economically, adding: “The nation has been denied growth by pervasive and institutionalised corruption everywhere. No institution or agency of the government is spared even the private sector is not innocent”.
Ubani lamented that the grave danger in all this was that the country has a populace that is less discerning and that which does not see any looming danger.
He said if the country must make progress economically and politically, “ a populace on red alert is the answer. He said: “If the rights of the citizen must be respected and duly observed, the populace has to insist on compliance by everyone, big or small. What I mean is that progress is not attained by docility and inertia. Countries that have experienced tremendous movement in terms of development had active, participatory and discerning populace as a catalyst. Chief Fawehinmi is missed greatly today because everyone in the nation knew that he was never docile, he was never asleep over breaches of government”.
He said the late Fawehinmi “will shout, he will scream and where they refused to hear, he will sue”.
According to Ubani, Fawhinmi had the Nigerian press as his greatest ally and that he was a firm believer in the rule of law and trusted the judiciary.
Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, described the lecture as another demonstration of the NBA’s readiness to engage issues affecting the country to provide platforms for cross-fertilisation of ideas that would bring solutions to issues bothering our development.
He lamented the fact that poor people could easily be induced to vote contrary to their objective judgment.
This, the governor said, could result in the emergence of leaders they least desire as well as results in poor policies and programmes, which in the end can could give rise to a bad economy.
Amosun emphasised the need for the Federal Government to get economy right to ensure that the nation’s democratic processes and polity are sustainable.
The governor stressed the need to empower the people to exercise their rights and defend them.
“Defending the rights of the citizenry and creating conducive atmosphere for people to realise their potential is the best means through which the government can become accountable to the people”, he added.
Amosun charged lawyers to see human rights beyond the narrow prism of right to life, free expression, fair hearing, education and other social rights contained in chapter four of the constitution.
He referred to some rights embedded in Chapter two of the constitution, which are non-justifiable, advising: “Your determination of rights must equally encompass all of economic rights, including but not limited to right to fair opportunities, decent and gainful employment”.
Pedro (SAN) who represented Governor Fashola urged lawyers to take up more public interest litigations and not to be concerned in making money alone.
Lawal explained that this was why the state government came up with the law encouraging lawyers to take up pro bono cases.He urged lawyers to emulate the late Chief Fawehinmi and to think of what they could do to make the society a better place for all of us.
In his lecture, Odinkalu, who traced the problems of the country to the bastardisation of the judiciary and the police described Fawehinmi as a generalisiimo, who fought for an egalitarian society and challenged Nigerians to stand up against injustice.
Odinkalu called for an egalitarian society where every citizen irrespective of his political linings, religion or creed is allowed to exist.
The NHRC chief attributed Nigeria’s economic woes to the collapse of the police and the nation’s “lobotomised” judiciary, a situation, which he explained led to the belief among influential citizens that judgment could be purchased.
While describing patriots as part of Nigeria’s problems, Odinkalu said the clamour for the national conference would not bring solution to the national woes, but a distilling constitutional convention without violence. He lamented that violence has been democratised in the country and that nobody is being held accountable for it.
He recalled that the genesis of the insecurity in the country started with the murder of the former editor-chief, of the defunct News Watch, magazine Dele Giwa, and the “complicity of the state” in the murder or the state’s attempt to cover it up.
Odinkalu said a failed Nigeria would be catastrophic to Africa, adding that Nigerian leaders would be failing the country if they failed to address the problems of the country.
“The balkanisation of Nigeria has to end. We challenge the Nigerian government to end the bombings and extermination of one another in the country” he said.
Chief Niyi Akintola (SAN) agreed with the view espoused by Odinkalu that The Patriots under the leadership of the latenChief F.R.A. Williams and Prof. Ben Nwabueze and others failed the nation.
Owonikoko lamented that the country has become a nation of consistent despot. He said the leadership has misplaced their priorities and that this has great implications for the country. He said for the country to move forward, the culture of inefficient and misplaced priority in appropriating the resources of the state must stop.
He urged the government to put in place mechanisms for checking the excesses of politicians for the nation to move forward.
The President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Okey Wali, in an address described Nigeria as a country with all the trappings of a nation state but failed to grab them. According to him, Fawehinmi was known for public interest litigation. As a prolific icon, he resisted actions of the government that were inconsistent with the rule of law using public interest litigation. He recalled that Fawehinmi recorded great achievements in public interest litigations under severe and harsh legal frame work and environment.
Wali noted that the situation is no longer the same with the intoduction of the new Fundamental Rights Enforcement Procedure Rules 2009 which encourages courts to welcome public interest litigations without cases being dismissed or struck out for want of locus standi.
He, therefore, urged lawyers to take advantage of the new rules to emulate Chief Fawehinmi by taking up public interest litigation cases, since those symptoms and components of bad governance fought by the late human right crusader are still prevalent.
The NBA president also urged the Federal Government to intensify efforts in its fight against insecurity, saying that the issue is not only affecting human lives, but also the economy.
Wali who also noted that the nation’ economy has performed below potential due to inefficient systems, corruption and weak infrastructure called on the Federal Government to intensify efforts in its fight against insecurity.
He also said NBA would embark on aggressive advocacy for the reform of investment laws to make the country more investor-friendly.
On serial violations of human rights in Nigeria, and flagrant violation of human rights in extra judicial killing, Wali advised the Federal Government through the office of the Attorney General of the Federation to take urgent steps to curb the rising rate of extra- judicial killings.
“Pre-trial detention and unlawful detention with no prospect of trial are other kinds of abuse of human rights and poor administration of criminal justice that stare us in the face on daily basis”, he added.
The NBA president further called on the President Goodluck Jonathan to embark on aggressive electoral reforms and constitutional review to ensure credible and fair elections, which is one of the ingredient of good governance.
“A political arrangement that promotes justice must be fashioned out as a matter of our survival as no one will do it for us we must ourselves deal with this challenge”, he added.
In a citation entitled, “The Gani Fawhinmi I know”, Chief Wahab Shittu, described him as a foremost, bold and courageous nationalist and statesman, crusader for justice and rule of law, philanthropist extraordinaire, celebrated author, publisher and law reporter and activist founder of a political party.
Shittu said Fawehinmi was one lawyer, who was not afraid to stand alone in the pursuit of his beliefs. “He was able to achieve his desires and command respect of the rank and file because he had character and operated on a higher moral ground. Gani”, he added, “could never be faulted in terms of integrity and moral standing. He led by example and showed the way as a leading light in the society. He was also very principled and was adjudged consistently consistent, which is a mark of greatness.
“Indeed, Gani’s life has demonstrated that there are two categories of lawyers: those who are obsessed with the theory of change, and those who are obsessed with the theory of forestalling change”, he said, adding: “Gani, clearly was the leader of the first category”.
Shittu also said the lecture made all those present to reflect on the value of honesty, integrity, sincerity, truthfulness, diligence, determination to excel, self respect, humility, fearlessness, contentment, and believing in the dignity of human individual.