Tag: Gani Fawehinmi

Perhaps apart from Olayinka Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946), no one else epitomises the spirit of Lagos more than Gani Fawehinmi — freedom-loving, crusading, passionate and irrepressible.

Indeed, his generation teemed with passionate crusaders for liberty — the great Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka (Wole Soyinka, for short), Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature and life-time campaigner for justice, who is still very much with us; the late Prof. Ayodele Awojobi, the University of Lagos engineering genius-academic, who died quite early, rocked with Nigeria’s problems; the incomparable Dr. Tai Solarin, unconventional educationist and model citizen extraordinaire, who at one time was personally ridding Lagos streets of abandoned dead bodies; and of course Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the Abami Eda himself, arch-iconoclast. Gani and Fela were perhaps the only Nigerians, living or dead, popularly known by only their first names.

Gani was no Lagos indigene. That rare honour belonged to Ondo, in Ondo State. But he lived in the city, practised there his glorious careers in Law and civil activism, and with his restless spirit that bristled against any form of domination, contributed to reaffirming Lagos as Nigeria’s ultimate city of freedom — from the colonial era of British subjugation, the military era of internal imperialism, and even the testy civil era of democracy without democrats, and its penchant to tip into fascism.

So when on April 22, the Akinwunmi Ambode Lagos State government decided to mark Gani’s posthumous 80th birthday, with a 44-foot high new statue, erected at the Gani Fawehinmi Liberty Park at Ojota, Lagos, it was the latest in the Lagos debt of gratitude to Gani, which every true Lagosian must cheer. Latest debt of gratitude because the Babatunde Fashola governorship (2007-2015) started it all, with the creation of the Gani Liberty Park, complete with an old but smaller statue. That Governor Ambode deemed it fit to replace the old one with this new giant one only epitomises the leap of Gani, from a giant in life to a Titan in death. It is honour eminently deserved.

Gushed Ambode at the occasion: “Chief Gani Fawehinmi loomed large in the minds of the people, especially the underprivileged and vulnerable masses for whom he was ready to lay down his life. In the hallowed corridors of the Law Courts where he fought many battles, he was revered as a titan. Also, his acts of philanthropy were borderless. He remains a hero and role model to many till date.”

But the eulogies didn’t start and stop with Lagos. From Abuja, President Muhammadu Buhari also chipped in his own bit: “The late Senior Advocate of the Masses was not an armchair-critic, nor a rabble rouser who fomented trouble for its sake; but a serious minded, articulate, cerebral and compassionate promoter of fundamental human rights, social justice, equity, fair play and national development. “

The Buhari praise comes with a neat historical tie-back, rippling with a sense of deja vu, which further beamed the torch on Gani’s complex nature, beyond the iron fealty to his personal philosophy and compassionate ideology.

During President Buhari’s first coming as a military Head of State, Gani balked the torrent of near-universal civic opposition to the regime’s human rights records. In what bordered on the hysterical — and not without good cause — the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) barred its members from appearing before the Buhari military tribunals to try allegedly corrupt politicians, then just overthrown with the doomed Second Republic (1979-1983).

But what the Bar saw as a flagrant violation of the accused’s human rights by the Buhari junta tribunals, Gani saw as fitting comeuppance for thieving politicians. Gani’s loyalty was to no elite body. It was rather to the poor, the disinherited and the vulnerable. By that spectacular act of rebellion, he nearly lost his wig and gown.

Right now, a good chunk of civil society is up in arms with the Buhari Presidency over sundry reasons. Would Gani, if alive, have joined that ensemble? Nobody can be sure. But suffice it to say Gani picked his fight, and fought it with utmost passion. But that is only after he must have convinced himself with forensic rigour. Many of our crusaders today could do with that Gani acid test.

Gani was great because he had a strong moral compass, a rigorous sense of justice and once he was convinced that a cause merited fighting, he gave it his all, even if it cost him his life.   All through his life, his focus was the poor and the vulnerable. In his flourishing legal career, one of his most famous quotes was that should he be faced with a tussle between the rich and the poor, he would dig and dig, till he found the law for the poor!

That was why in every popular civic campaign of his day, Gani would be in the front: the aborted Sovereign National Conference, fixed for National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos in 1990, the sustained protest against the annulment, by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, that Basorun MKO Abiola won. That struggle, against the late Gen. Sani Abacha’s efforts to sustain the annulment, led to the final push to the return of democracy in 1999.

Perhaps more than any other in his generation, Gani with Fela led the highest number of harassment and imprisonment, by the military authorities; not for any crimes committed but for personal beliefs. It is true Fela finally got convicted for a trumped up foreign exchange offence, for which he claimed the presiding judge, Justice Gregory Okoro-Idogwu, afterwards apologised, in the famous “He don beg me” saga. But Gani was never convicted of any crime. Yet he had his bags packed and ready for detention by the paranoid military authorities.

In Gani’s often classical match-up with Chief Rotimi Williams, the foremost legal juggernaut of his day, Gani also radiated his diametrically opposite philosophy of Law.

FRA, as Chief Williams was popularly called, was the lawyer’s lawyer, always citing the lawyer’s creed, of everyone’s entitlement to legal representation, as a right. Gani, on the other hand, cut to the chase, insisting — lawyers’ creed be damned — some cases are so morally repugnant, lawyers should flee from them.

The final argument is neither here nor there. But perhaps a little more moral consciousness could have saved the Nigerian judiciary from its decay of today. FRA himself, on the social plane, would later realise even the Law could not be an island onto itself. That would explain why in his winter years, he chaired “The Patriots”, a polite group of accomplished southern Nigerians, pushing for radical constitutional changes, to achieve equity in the Nigerian federation.

Indeed, Nigerians have a thousand good reasons to remember and thank Gani, the famous Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM), who nearly missed his legal excellence right of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), because the establishment was paranoid.

Thanks again, Lagos, for helping us all to pay our debt of gratitude to a worthy titan.