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 Hardly a day passes by that Nigerians do not say something about this man. Nowadays, virtually in every newspaper and magazine, Nigerians say something about this man. We can only give you samples of how Nigerians see this man. Dagogo Josiah, quoting Prof. Eskor Toyo in an article titled the “Ascent of Chaos” in Daily Sunray , Wednesday, August 17, 1994 wrote: “.... the greatest politician of present day Nigeria is Gani Fawehinmi, the Lagos Lawyer... that gentleman is the only politician in Nigeria whose interests transcend the narrowness of creed, ethnicity and the selfish. He is a crusader for justice, for the education of the people and subsequently their economic empowerment. There is necessarily No East, West or North in his world view and in his issue - based politics, he has permanently sided with the people”. Also Dan Agbese of the Newswatch Magazine on April 29, 1985 in an article titled “Without Blood” wrote: “Fawehinmi is tough. And Fawehinmi is courageous. He has the toughness of personal conviction; and he has the courage to speak his mind. When others are afraid to speak up, he dusts his Oxford Dictionary, gathers the press, turns his mouth into a rapier and promptly disembowels silence born of fear. And Fawehinmi was once described as a controversial man. He thrives on controversy the same way a fish thrives on water. Take him out of the rough seas of controversy and see if you have the stomach to watch a fish survive out of water. Fawehinmi is the greatest and the most erudite enemy of cant and hypocrisy this nation had ever had. There was none like him before him; there is none like him now and I fear, there may be none like him post him.” Uthman Sodipe in an article titled “Fawehinmi :virtues of a lion” in Guardian, Tuesday, October, 7, 1997 wrote: “there is a legendary summative hugeness about this symbol of truth, this sworn seeker of the light; cudgelled, abused, vilified for his conscionable nobility. Savaged in Kirikiri, Gasua, and hundreds of other gulags, Fawehinmi remains in the unique, undaunted for bearance of the deathless, still mocking the primitive prompting of despotism. Even today, he is already etched in historical sacredness, far beyond the venom of the truncheon or the tarnishing abruptness of the grave. He reposes in eternal reference, a girdle to the weak, a scourge to the wicked.” During the turbulent period of Babangida’s regime when most radicals fizzled out, Chief Gani Fawehinmi remained unbowed and the following words were used to describe him by Itse Elijah Wilkie Sr. in the Observer of Tuesday, June 8, 1993 in an article titled Let’s Honour Gani: “Chief Gani Fawehinmi has chosen not to be an ordinary average Nigerian. He has his ideals and with a relentless zeal, he pursues them. Loved and hated, he marches on in his crusade for a better Nigeria. He has completely sold out to his convictions. He walks majestically on “sacred grounds” where angels fear to tread. He is a Nigerian who is not a coward. His training in law has revived in him the native African stubbornness against injustice. To him, the law is not what it is but a dynamic social engineering mechanism - a means towards achieving a free and democratic society. He is a man of many parts. He is into any aspect of law. He writes, reports, publishes, edits and practices the law. Above all, he is also a philanthropist. He has a scholarship scheme for the less privileged in the society. He has contributed more to the development of the law than any other publisher of the law. His law reports are found in all law chambers worth their salt. Even if you hate his guts, you cannot but admire his reports....... Nay, purchase them for your law library for keeps. He sues and has been sued, arrested, detained, convicted, imprisoned, discharged and acquitted. As a result of his legal activities, laws have had to be abrogated and re-enacted. He has been blacklisted by government and his professional colleagues, yet he is resilient in his determination to pursue his goal to a logical and legal conclusion. I wonder if he will ever be satisfied until the day he takes his final breath. The only honour he has received within his country where he has been espousing the truth so restlessly is from his militant admirers - the students of OAU. They conferred on him the honour of SAM (Senior Advocate of the Masses). However, outside of his country he has admirers in far away Austria, who conferred on him the Dr. Bruno Kreisky Foundation Award for his unrelentless defence of human rights in Nigeria.” Even the man who calls himself the ‘Evil Genius’, former Head of State and self-imposed military ‘President’, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in one of his numerous interviews with Tell Magazine of July 24, 1995 at pages 9 - 20 titled: “I am the Evil Genius”, said: “If there is one man I respect, it is Gani, it sounds strange. I appreciate you that you have a strong conviction and fight for it consistently. This is the context in which I see Gani. I was a consistent ‘evil’ and he was ... a dogged fighter and I respect him for this. Infact there are three of them I respect like that. They are Gani, late (Professor) Awojobi and Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman. None of them says anything without doing his homework first.” In the Guardian of Saturday November 29, 1997 in an article titled “The search for presidential candidates: candidates of dreams?” the following words were used to describe his political consistency: “Chief Gani Fawehinmi, lawyer, human rights activist and social crusader is undoubtedly the most consistent friend of the Nigerian masses but often seen by successive Nigerian military administration as a thorn in its flesh. For this, he has been in jail without trial 27 times in 29 years and in the process, has earned for himself titles such as “Senior Advocate of the People”, “the Conscience of the People” and a “Prisoner of Conscience”. However, the turbulence that has characterised his life has not dampened his spirit. Close to 60 years, he still remains his usual self: militant, candid and intrepid”. He was also described by Dare Babarinsa in Tell Magazine, August 26, 1996 in an article titled "The Cross of Fawehinmi”, thus : “If there is a Nigerian who deserves the Nobel Prize for Peace, he is Gani Fawehinmi, the great human rights campaigner and leading opponent of successive military juntas. Fawehinmi is a first class intellectual, humanist and indomitable fighter for freedom. Like William Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Albert Lithuli, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jnr., he cares passionately for his fellow men. He believes that troubled and sick as Nigeria may be, it can be cured by pacific social engineering. He is ready, willing and able to put his broad shoulders to the plough. Now he is wasting away in Bauchi Prison, a hostage to Nigeria's latest dictator. It could be said that Fawehinmi patterned his life struggle along the career of Thomas Jefferson, also a lawyer, who drafted that universal charter of freedom, the American Declaration of Independence. That document has a ringing truth about Nigeria today as it did for the United States when that country declared its independence from the British colonial masters in 1776. Like Jefferson, Fawehinmi believes that a legitimate government must derive its power from the people. Even the hated apartheid regime of old South Africa was a product of popular suffrage, though one limited to a white electorate alone. But in Nigeria's case, it cannot even be said that the ruling junta represents the military or that if every soldier is allowed to vote, the situation would still be one and the same thing. This has been the cross of Fawehinmi's life. It is in the pursuit of this truth that has now led the great lawyer to Golgotha, away from his family, his loved ones, his magnificent mother, his books and his vocation of the law. In the pursuit of his goal, he has chosen to be as trustful of the law as Obafemi Awolowo and as pacific as Mahatma Gandhi. In and out of jail for the cause of democracy and the rule of law, he has never abandoned the straight and narrow path. Unlike Lenin and Fidel Castro, two other great lawyers, he has never abandoned the belief that the law can be an instrument of revolutionary changes. Grateful Nigerian youths have bestowed on him, in recognition of his historic struggle, the title of Senior Advocate of the Masses, SAM. Fawehinmi has always offered his advice to the military on how it can save itself from the corrosive effect of power. Fawehinmi had represented Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni compatriots in court. He had addressed rallies on the platform of his National Conscience Party, NCP. He has remained unrelenting and relentless in his pursuit of truth and justice. It is this steadfast alliance with the truth that is the strength of Gani Fawehinmi. That is why the dictator is afraid of him." |
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