In early 1991, Comrade Chief Abdul-Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi, radical lawyer, public interest intellectual, activist, writer, publisher and progressive politician called his archetypal world press conference at his bulky law firm located at the Anthony village in Lagos in the western parts of Nigeria, to talk about the state of the nation or state of the state. I had not met him before, but have read and heard several of his fervent attacks against the General Ibrahim Badamusi Babangida’s junta of that time.
A year before, Babangida had cast off Gani, as he was popularly called, into the disease-ridden Ikoyi prisons for criticizing his reign of terror. I was eager to meet Gani, to encourage him to keep up the good fight and to also meet other comrades like the late Dr. Beko Ransom Kuti, a humanist and medical doctor who dropped his stethoscope to join the anti-military struggle. The press conference which Gani had called was bid for 8:30am, and I was determined to be there on time. I had traveled in an over-crowded bus from Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State throughout the night and had arrived in Lagos the following morning. The event was well attended. I met a lot of pro-democracy campaigners, journalists, radical political activists, and student leaders I had read about.
After the forum, Gani distributed leaflets and pamphlets to the participants, the documents were some kind of organized criticisms against the Babangida’s regime. He later addressed those of us who traveled from other states to the event, and after his animating handshake with each one of us, urged all to, “go to your respective places and continue the struggle, the end of this evil regime is near”. That was my first encounter with Gani, after then, anytime I found myself in Lagos, I would visit him and we exchanged our views on the state of the nation. In 1992, a some months after that unforgettable press conference, Babangida again, kidnapped Gani from his law chambers and held him hostage at Kuje prison, another dungeon in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. The act of hostage taking whether for political or commercial purpose, was started by the Nigerian government which the criminal and militant elements operating in the Niger Delta swamps copied it from the Nigerian state under its succeeding rulers likes Babangida and others.
If not the likes of Gani, the country would have slipped into deeper nightfall than the one we are in now. Every society longing to achieve democracy and development needs a Chief Gani Fawehinmi. From mid- 1969, since he started his stir for a good society and was subjected to iron-handed conditions, harassment, threats, arrests and detentions, from one contaminated torture chambers to another. Even when he was supposed to travel abroad to seek medical attention for his health problems his travel documents were seized and was arrested and detained. All these beastly treatments meted out to him were responsible for his health complications and eventual death.
In Nigeria, majority of people see their professional practices as merely means of earning livelihoods. But, Fawehinmi saw it differently. To him, occupations like journalism, engineering, medicine, architecture and others should be practiced to transform our society into a good one. In 1994, when the despotic junta of the late General Sani Abacha in league with the Anglo-Dutch Shell Plc, arrested and detained Ken Saro-Wiwa, the celebrated Nigerian writer and activist and some of his compatriots on trumped up charge of murdering 4 high-flying Ogoni Chiefs, Gani led a strong team of lawyers who stood up for Saro-wiwa and his marginalized Ogoni people. Others in the defense team were Olisa Agbakoba, Femi Falana, Sam Amadi, Uche Onyeagucha, and Oronto Douglas. Gani and the lawyers above later withdrew from Justice Ibrahim Auta’s Kangaro military tribunal Abacha and his Shell folks had made up their minds to hang Saro-wiwa especially, and other of his followers. Gani would say to us that his appearance before Auta and his hordes of kangaroo was lending credibility to their malignant machination of the Abacha and Shell agenda.
They (Abacha and Shell) want the hanging of the Ogoni folks to serve as a disincentive to other equally poor communities in the region who were imitating the Ogoni non-violent struggle to demand for ecological debts and environmental protection from the oil/gas magnate and the Nigerian state. General Victor Malu, now retired, spokesperson for Abacha’s war council proclaimed their decision to kill Saro-wiwa and the others a few days before November 10, 1995 (the date Ken and his comrades were hanged). Then, Chief Fawehinmi’s political alliance, National Conscience Party (NCP) was at its sprouting stage, and I was elected its protem secretary-general of the Rivers State branch, while Gani was its national coordinator and his law firm was NCP’s temporarily secretariat.
As the storm gathered over the proposed execution, it was directed from the national secretariat that NCP at all levels should mobilize, organize and educate the people against the hanging. A conference was called by the coordinator (Gani) on the morning of the hanging: We were planning what to do on that black November 10, 1995 when a thick cloud of gloom blanketed the venue of our rally while Gani was addressing NCP cadres in spite of his deteriorating health. A doctor was assigned to monitor him, and not to allow him talk much. Oh! The extreme sad news burst through the venue, “Ken Saro-wiwa, Nigerian writer and minority rights agitator is hanged along with 8 others” the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broke it. The bad news electrified the atmosphere, Gani disobeyed medical advice and went into frenzy as the crowd yelled in disorderly, condemnatory tone against the hanging, Fawehinmi wept profusely and crashed on the bare ground from the elevated podium where he stood. It was a very heartbreaking scene. I couldn’t help the situation, millions of mournful tears streamed down my cheeks.
Some years ago, as a special correspondent of The Beacon, a Port Harcourt –based independent and loudmouthed weekly newspaper, I and my colleagues there ran into big trouble, Comrade Gani saved us. We had written a few diagnostic feature articles about the Rivers State gas turbine project, which was generating darkness in the state while the blood soaked administration of Dr. Peter Otunaya Odili and his big business associate, Sir Arumeni Johnson and his Rockson Engineering company were allegedly using it as a conduit pipe to siphon Rivers state funds away.
With Odili at the background, Johnson, a knight of the Catholic Church and the director of Arik Air, a colossal air transport group allegedly linked to the Odili corruption, had dragged the paper before Justice (Mrs.) Pedro High Court at Igbosere in Lagos State for libel. Kehinde Sofola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and attorney-general to the corrupt civilian government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, was his lawyer. Sofola was an ex-member of the National Judicial Council (NJC). Chief Minere Amakiri, publisher of The Beacon, got a letter from the right-wing legal titan, and simply put up a phone call to Comrade Gani, who promised to take up the matter without charging a fee. Johnson had thought that bringing the matter to Lagos would pump off the paper financially. The legal war fare began and it was very tough, contrary to Arumemi-Johnson’s expectations. Johnson allegedly bribed some local journalists to punch The Beacon group in the media and do the hack newspaper journalism brand, to praise the swindling Odili/Johnson’s turbine of darkness. One such journalist was Ngo Martyns Yellowe, publisher of The Top News, a weekly local lurid newspaper based in Port Harcourt. Yellowe would appear in the court each day the matter was heard, to hold a watching brief for Johnson. Yellowe really benefited considerably from the Odili’s corrupt government in the state. The matter was later withdrawn from court by the plaintiff (Johnson). Sadly, later Sofola passed on peacefully on March 25, 2007 at the age of 83 at his Ikenna home.
In 1973, Chief Minere Amakiri was a correspondent of The Observer newspaper, and had written a news report about a looming teacher’s strike over non-payment of their salaries by the state government. The teacher’s action coincided with a spendthrift birthday bash being organized by Commander Alfred Papapriye Diette Spiff, a young naval officer and military administrator (Governor) of the old Rivers state then. Spiff was enraged over Amakiri’s “embarrassing” piece. The military leader in the state then went on a war path; he ordered his mad dogs (soldiers) to arrest and detain Amakiri, and have his head shaven with broken bottles. The savage act induced wide denunciation. Chief Gani went to court on behalf of the victim of state recklessness, and defeated the government in court. Amakiri was awarded some damages by the court. That was classic Gani Fawehinmi.
The conscience is our society is gone. This is the end of a radical phenomenon called Gani. Who will take it up from him? Who will challenge misrule when it threatens us like now? Who will mobile the Nigerian masses for mass action against state irresponsibility? Who will speak for us? Our Senior Advocate of the Masses (SAM), not their Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) is gone forever. Farewell, fare thee well comrade.
Naagbanton is a freelance journalist and activist based in Port Harcourt, Rivers State
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