Chief Gabriel Aigbonosimua Giwa-Amu is a Lagos based Lawyer, Human Rights Activist and Public Commentator. He is also the founder of Stephen and Solomon Foundation which in conjunction with the Knights of St Mulumba Lekki Sub-Council renders free legal services for indigent persons behind Prison walls. He says he derives blissful happiness when a released inmate in taking the first step into freedom smiles and kisses the earth and raises his arms in appreciation to the Creator for His Mercy. He spoke in his posh Lagos Office and it is quite revealing. Excerpts:
There are no more Ganis and the Government seems to be happy for it. Do you agree?
In the first place, I do not think anybody will want to be Gani Fawehimi; everybody has come to cut his own structure, his own frame and his own projections and character. So Gani is a highly respectable legal guru – or was. But when I used the word, it is because I know that his works will live forever and he will continue to remain the Law Lord that he was in the history of this country. He, it must be noted, bequeathed to a lot of lawyers more than any legal practitioner has done. But be that as it may, not many lawyers will want to be regarded as desirous of starting from where he stopped, not because his footprint were not salutary, but because of their judicial (and) prudential cowardice.
Today we have Lawyers who are just mouthpiece for hypocrisy. Just like the great Gani said, “Show me just one single Human Rights Activist”. He equally challenged himself and said “I will even criticize myself if I am the President of this country!”. That is the stuff the man was made of. And true to his words, please show me just one Human Rights Activist in our land today. It is indeed sad and unfortunate that we do not have Human Rights Activists in the mould of Gani anymore.
It is also noteworthy that, to put a final assertion to my submissions, the self styled evil genius General Ibrahim Babaginda, when paying tribute at Gani’s passage, noted that in the colony of Human Rights Activist there is only one man who is consistent and that because of the man’s consistency, he has a lot of respect for him and that man is Gani. He went further to say that when others mouth their opposition to perceived odious government policies in the day, they approach the seat of government in the twilight to counter what they publicly espoused………….
……..But why is this so?
Yes it is really disturbing that, because of the economic situation in the land, the acclaimed Human Rights Activist prefers not to tow the line of the Ganis because unlike the late icon who had the courage and zeal to defeat poverty that would have brought him down, he damned it and that was reflective in the very case that shot him into limelight. It was the case of a civil servant in one of the Northern States whose wife was taken over by a Permanent Secretary who was the man’s boss. He did it pro-bono and that was phenomenal at that time and from then on he became a cynosure of all eyes.
Now to properly answer your question, the present economic situation like I earlier mentioned should be largely responsible for these anomalies, a situation where school fees are arbitrarily increased without due notice, the cost of putting food on the family’s table that is growing by the seconds in geometrical progression and other sundry responsibilities, Lawyers are compelled not to show interest or invest their professional time doing free legal services for the people even when it is glaring such persons are indigent. What now takes uppermost in the hearts of Lawyers today and without sounding immodest is the urgent desire to live in the choicest parts of the metropolis, and own properties that should fall within the brackets of billions. It is not uncommon to see them flaunting fat accounts that are in naira and foreign currency that will make Gani shudder in his and wouldn’t have associated with them where he to be alive.
However, that is not to say that people like Festus Keyamo, Femi Falana, Olisa Agbakoba can no longer hold out their own, but from the prevailing circumstance, I dare say that somewhere along the line, we have amended the real definition.
Do you see the congestion of Prison as fallout of these attitudes of your learned friends?
One will not totally absolve the Lawyers of this also, though the government has not shown enough will to decongest the Prison in a proactive manner because when you visit the Prisons and you see the number of people that are in there and you discover that they are there because they did not understand the language of the courts which the Lawyers would have been able to interpret for them neither will they ever get to understand the whimsical Magistrate who does not understand that somebody who was allege to have stolen a laptop whose value is put at thirty to forty thousand naira should be given liberal terms. For proper understanding of what I am trying to say here, let’s look at an instance of a man allege to have stolen a Nokia mobile phone and the Magistrate sitting to decide his fate, puts bail conditions as three years tax clearance, produce a document covering a property situated at Yaba in Lagos what she is indirectly saying is that the suspect should remain in Prison perpetually.
Another factor that I will like to emphasize here is the attitude of these Magistrates to work, with due respect to few exception because I stumbled on the Lagos State Magistrate Law guiding Magistrate Courts 2010 and I was surprised that it states that at the first sitting, adjournment should not exceed fourteen days and thereafter trial and that no case ought to stay more than ninety days. It is in interesting to know that most of them do not comply with these directives but what you observe is some Magistrates smiling and grinning from ear to ear after adjourning a case of stealing for two months. All these are happening because the men of courage who would have taken up these aberrations like Gani are no longer there and the people are worse for it.
Is the situation redeemable?
That was why I suggested a proactive approach by Government at all levels, some States whose penchant is to throw any one perceived to have contravened their laws behind Prison walls, should be made to cater for such inmates rather than shifting the responsibilities to the Federal Government. I see a situation where a State like Lagos State realizing that it is paying through the nose to cater for those they clamped behind Prison walls cautioning their lackey like KAI and LASTMA to soft pedal on their garrulous activities. To help indigent inmates, a law should be promulgated that mandates any member of the Bar to handle at least five to six cases pro-bono, including those who are shortlisted for the revered Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
In that way and manner, the Prison decongestion that is desired by all including government, will begin to receive the needed attention. Lastly the members of the Nigerian Police Force should be re-orientated in the rudiments of effecting arrest because on several occasions, their officers have been on a number of occasion arrested persons on spurious charges and when they discover that the case they arrested a suspect for, will be found ridiculous in a law court, they dump such suspects in Prisons.
You run an NGO that is responding to the plight of those indigent ones behind Prison walls, do you have government support? If not, how do you fund such capital intensive projects that your colleagues shuns?
Thank you very much for this all important question. Governments at whatever level appear to be blind, deaf and dumb to our activities at Stephen and Solomon Foundation that was officially and legally born on the 31st of October 2001 but let me quickly add that when our Foundation was approached by the Knights of St Mulumba Lekki Sub-Council to handle the legal aspect of proposed joint venture we did accede and after careful study of their proposal, we volunteered to go into the venture. It was not with the mindset that we wanted to receive accolades from individuals or government but because of the religious conviction and because of the societal conviction that 70% of those in Prison are innocent of offences said to have been committed and I am glad to tell you that we have at the last count released over one thousand and eight hundred indigent inmates not only releasing them but rehabilitating them.
You mentioned earlier that Government is unaware or your activities or do not seem to concern themselves with you grandiose efforts at decongesting Nigeria Prisons, how do you get your funding?
It is rather sad and unfortunate that funding has been very poor, it has been embarrassingly low; perhaps the kind of publicity required or sought for by would be donors are not applicable in this case. Here in this clime, we always want to appear and be seen on the screen of the Television or on the pages of the Newspapers celebrating a donation of some bundle of tissue papers. Since we came into existence, apart from the financial muscle we get from the Knights of St Mulumba Lekki Sub-Council, the only donor we have on record is from an anonymous who linked us through his Solicitor Kelechi Obi Esq. yet there is the need for other donors to join.
Before we let you go, the controversy generated by the Federal Government decision to remove oil subsidy is on raging. What is your take on the issue?
In the midst of all that relates to oil subsidy, do you know that I always nurse these nostalgic feelings of the time and glorious eras of Labour union leaders like late Pa Immodu, Hassan Summonu, and Adams Oshiomole who I know wouldn’t have been complacent in the face of this odious policy of government? The NLC and their operatives of the modern times are like the Japanese Yoyo, they dance here and there achieving nothing at the end of the day and I make bold to say that some of them end up enriching their pockets, then they drive all us back to square one.
Let me ask which Nigeria that does not know that the removal of oil subsidy at this time is tantamount to an evil scourge. And a government that that cannot maintain its refineries is stubbornly agitating such and paying defiant ears to popular public opinion about its action. It merely translates that Nigerians are unfortunately been governed by a government that is highly irresponsible, exhibiting executive recklessness, dereliction of duty, failure of purpose and competence at governance.
The whole game of government at this time, is that of playing the ostrich, they are aware that the act is that of an irresponsible government, it is a slap on the sensibilities of the people of this country that the government they supposedly elected into office of public trust, is now telling them that for their stupidly electing them, they have to suffer the ills associated with their intention to remove oil subsidy.
I read with interest that in Libya, the fuel pump price under slain Gaddafi was the lowest in the world; the same country has the highest literacy rate in Africa as released by the United Nation. The same Libya has 30% of its citizen studying in foreign countries at the expense of government and whenever an average Libyan is diagnose of terminal diseases, he is sent abroad for medical attention at the expense of his home government.
Does it not thrill one to know that six million, five hundred meters of water is sourced from the desert, they call it man made river and that feed the inhabitants of Benghazi and Bali. The best housing units in Africa is in Libya, where deserts have been graded to pave way for the sprouting up of low cost housing to emerge Is it not also interesting to know that in spite of the heavy bombardment by NATO forces and the forays of the forces of the National Transitional Council (NTC) there was never power outage except for security reasons and that at no time was their hospitals and medical personnel’s overstretched.
From all these sterling qualities, will it be out of place to ask that Mummar Gaddafi be resurrected and come to govern Nigeria while in exchange we give them Goodluck Jonathan since our leaders seems not to know what they want neither do they understand why they occupy public office.
Painfully, we see all these and it is not moving us to be decisive in our pronouncements forgetting that those who forsake their private conscience for the sake of public opinion has only succeeded in carving a shorter route to chaos. What I meant by that is that is that if our private consciences say we should get up but public opinion says you do not have money and so you will not be regarded, then, the country is going to be on fire. The issue of Boko Haram readily comes to mind, are they not winning now, sadly so they are winning more so for a group of persons to bomb State and Federal headquarters of the Nigeria Police and even their Anti- Bomb Unit speaks volume, of our security that has ebbed so low, so it my clarion call on all Human Rights Activist to speak out.
Courtesy: BluePrint (Nigeria).