|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Thursday, October 7, 2004 View all Press Releases PRESS STATEMENT: APPEAL TO NIGERIAN LAWYERS TO OFFER FREE LEGAL SERVICES DURING THE NATIONAL STRIKE Monday, October 11, 2004 is the beginning of a National Strike in Nigeria. The Strike has a fundamental importance to the future of this country in view of the subject matter involved. The Federal Government makes so much money from the sales of our crude oil. In return, the same government obstinately increases the poverty of the people by inflicting abnormal and astronomical prices for refined petroleum products thereby virtually destroying our quality of life, dehumanizing our existing and enslaving our future. All attempts by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Civil Society to have meaningful dialogue with the Federal Government on the over-bloated prices of petroleum products have proved abortive. Obasanjo has turned deaf ears to the suffocating groans, pains and pangs that are ravaging the socio-economic landscape of the country. This government has consciously violated its sacred constitutional duty under Section 14 sub-section (2) (b) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, which provides that: "The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government;" The Constitution is the fundamental law of the country. We as lawyers must advance the welfare of our people and when it is assaulted, we owe a duty to our calling and to our profession to direct the people and to advance their cause, which in the instant case is their welfare. We have been enjoined to do this by the First Indigenous Nigerian Lawyer, Christopher Sapara Williams when he said before he died on 15 March, 1915 that: "The Legal Practitioner lives for the direction of his people and the advancement of the cause of his country." Sapara Williams was born on the 19th of July 1855 and was enrolled as the first indigenous Nigerian lawyer on 30 January 1888. With this statement of duty in mind, I hereby appeal to all legal practitioners in Nigeria to support the Strike that commences on Monday, 11 October 2004 and to render free legal services to those who may be arrested in the course of the strike.  CHIEF GANI FAWEHINMI LL.D, SAN |
 Chief Gani Membership Forum |
View chief gani's 
|
|
Copyright 2005 Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), All Rights Reserved. |
|