Mister President, Your Excellency, the Governor represented by the Attorney General, panel, ladies, and gentlemen,
It’s a great honor for me to have been invited to chair this lecture in honor of the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who, by the way, I knew personally as a young man, as a young banker. That was actually the time I first met him, and he remains for me one of the great role models that Nigerians need to always remember—a true national hero.
All those who went to university in our generation and were looking up to progressives in action looked up to the likes of Gani Fawehinmi in the legal profession, along with academics like Claude Ake, Ekeh, Nzemerem, Bade Onimode, Yusuf Bangura, and others. All those of my generation probably remember all these names.
One of the saddest commentaries about Nigeria today is this: try and count how many people you’d find that fit into that category in the public intellectual scene. It tells you how far we have sunk. Back then, there was a whole galaxy of them.
I will make a few personal remarks before I discuss the topic of today. Let me start with law and structural adjustment.
It’s interesting, from a personal experience. I heard Dr. Afolabi speak about the subsidy, and Dr. Babalola on how the subsidy on food was removed in 1986. Actually, the removal started in 1977, and that was when we had the Ali Must Go riots as undergraduates.
Why is that important? In 1977, I was a member of the Student Representative Assembly at ABU (Ahmadu Bello University) and one of the leaders of the Ali Must Go riots in Zaria, during which some of our colleagues were shot dead.
This was my first year in the university, and I had the ambition at that time to study law. My first choice was law, which, for those who know ABU, was on a different campus: the Congo campus. My second choice was social sciences.
When the lists first came out, my first offer was a BA in French, which I was not going to do. Then I had social sciences. I didn’t make it into law on the first list because I fell just short of the grades needed to study law. However, there is always a gray area called the Dean’s List.
I got introduced to the Dean of the Faculty of Law, a gentleman called Baba Shani. I went to him and made a very strong case for why I should be admitted into the law faculty. He said, “Okay,” and sat me down to talk about my father, the family I came from, and all that.
He then told me he was aware I was one of the leaders of the Ali Must Go riots and warned me: “In the Faculty of Law and the Congo campus, we have no room for irresponsible radicals like you. If I give you admission and you bring any of those radical ideas from the main campus to Congo, you will be expelled.”
Since I planned to participate in every demonstration and every riot that was about to happen, I decided it was safest for me to remain on the main campus, where people like Bala Usman and Yusuf Bangura would be happy to see us come out on demonstrations, rather than go to the Faculty of Law.
The interesting thing is, I grew up thinking law was a very conservative profession filled with pro-establishment people. People like Gani Fawehinmi were an eye-opener. They showed us that the law could actually be used to radically transform society.
It’s not about the discipline itself, but what you choose to do with it. The question I ask today is: why don’t we have more Ganis among you lawyers?
Now, I speak as a layman. My PhD is in Islamic law. I never studied common law, but I hope to study it at some point in my life. A few things need to be remembered beyond SAP (Structural Adjustment Program).
The first is the importance of virtue and values. And again, we all remember Gani Fawehinmi famously said, “I have a suitcase packed for prison.” He actually had a bag that was ready. Every time they knocked on the door, he would carry his bag, ready to go into detention. Ready and, although you can explain this, it is when you begin to read. If you go back to, say, to study philosophy, and they talk about virtuous people, they say those people are happy even when being tortured, and you’re wondering, how can anyone be happy when being tortured?
The reality is, for Gani, being tortured or being imprisoned because he stood for what was right, being tortured by tyrants and oppressors was a source of happiness and joy. And this is what happens when people focus on what they can control—their values, their emotions, their integrity, their dignity. That is what is most important to them, not these wigs and gowns and bank accounts and turbans. Not—you take a position, you lose it. You have money, you lose it. You have a life, you lose it. You have a child, he dies. Your parents die, your spouses die. These things all go. You need to have more and more people who understand that in this country, we are holding on so much. We’ve defined our happiness so much in terms of that which we do not control, and in doing that, we have let our country go to blazes. Nobody wants to stand up anymore and speak for the truth. Nobody wants to lose his position. Nobody wants to lose money. Nobody wants to take any risks. And frankly, in this room, there are many who are part of that process of destroying the country.
So it’s time, I think, for the legal profession as a whole to start focusing on the ethics and values of the profession, not just the technical knowledge of the law. And Gani Fawehinmi was probably not the most brilliant lawyer. He was probably not the most educated lawyer or the most widely read lawyer, but he was clearly and by far the lawyer with the highest level of integrity and the moral conscience of the country.
So you can know the law. You can be an expert in the law. But what—what do you use it for? Do you use it to perpetuate injustice? Do you use it to hang on to technicalities and take what is not due to one and give it to them? And in any event, how do people in this learned profession, supposedly the most educated people, the elite of our educated people, how do they allow themselves to be manipulated by uneducated, uncouth politicians for money? How do you reduce yourself to that level? How do you look at yourself in the mirror when you take money from some corrupt politician and use the knowledge of the law to give him what he does not have? How do you face yourself in the mirror?
Let us try and find happiness in becoming more like Gani Fawehinmi.
Let us try and focus on virtue. Let us try and focus on what we are. You can have a lot of money, you can have a position, you can have a lot of knowledge. At the end of the day, it is who you are inside that decides what you become. So if we all do that, I think we are on the path to bringing our country back from the brink.
The speaker spoke about the need for strong institutions. You know, I’ve heard this over and over again. I said the reality is we do have strong institutions. The judiciary is a strong institution, the police is a strong institution, the presidency is a strong institution. The National Assembly is a strong institution. The Central Bank is a strong institution. But no matter how strong an institution is, if you take the wrong person and put him in that institution, he destroys it. The Nigerian Police Force has all it needs to maintain law and order, but if the IG and the commissioner decide that their job is to be at the service of politicians and not to maintain law and order, that institution is destroyed. And so what we need again is to go back and ask ourselves about our values. Do we really have those values? Are we really committed to what we do? What is the integrity with which we approach our work?
I think for someone like Gani, these are the lessons in his life beyond him. He’s dead, may Allah have mercy on him, but we are celebrating him today because he represents what we think we all should be, even if we are not able to be there. And when I saw after his death, all the people that were praising him, some of them were people who persecuted him in his lifetime. But even in death, for them to get some element of credibility, they had to associate themselves with him.
And this is what we should all try to be, because we are all going to pass away.
We will not be here. What is left is not the money that you made, not even the knowledge that you had. It is the values that you lived by, and for me, this is the significance of this memorial.
Now, on the topic of structural adjustment, on the topic of the economy, on the topic of subsidies, you know, it’s extremely interesting, as an economist, listening to lawyers and engineers discuss the economy. You know, extremely, you know, beautiful analysis. To be honest, I can stand here today and I can give a few points that are contrary, a few points that explain, perhaps, what we are going through and how it was totally predictable, most of it, and maybe avoidable. But I’m not going to do that.
I’ve chosen not to speak about the economy and the reforms, or to even explain anything, because if I explain it, it would help this government. And I don’t want to help the government. I don’t want to help this government. You know, they’re my friends. If they don’t behave like friends, I don’t behave like a friend, so I watch them being stewed, and they don’t even have people with credibility who can come and explain what they are doing.
But I’m not going to help. I started out helping, but I’m not going to help. I’m not going to discuss it. Let them come and explain to Nigerians why the policies that are being pursued are being pursued, and meanwhile, I’m watching a very nice movie with popcorn in my hands.
What we are going through today is, at least in part, not totally, at least in part, a necessary consequence of decades of irresponsible economic management.
Decades ago, if you continue along this path, this is where you are going to end up. If you continue, this is where you are going to end up, and they refused to listen. Now, is everything being done today correct? No, but like I said, when I’m ready to talk about the economy, I probably will. For now, I’m here to honor Chief Gani Fawehinmi. I’m here to remind us all about what he stood for, to ask us, to appeal to us, to plead with us to go back, like I said recently, to that distinction between who we are and what we are.
Who you are are those things that Gani was. They’re about your values, what you can control.
What you are: you’re a Northerner, you’re a Southerner. You are rich, you are poor. You are a president, you are an Emir. It’s what you are.
You have two lawyers. One is an honest lawyer with integrity. The other is a thief. That is who he is.
You have two governors or two senators or two Emirs. At the end of the day, if you are a thief, you are a thief, whether you are Igbo or Hausa or Muslim or Christian or a lawyer. A thief is a thief.
That is who you are. If you’re an honest person, if you have integrity, if you have courage, if you have self-discipline, it doesn’t matter whether you have money or don’t have money, whether you have a position or don’t have a position, that is who you are.
Can we please go back as a country to asking ourselves that question: Who am I truly?
You look at your own life. You’ve gone through many stages of what, what, what. I was a student, I was a banker, I was governor of the Central Bank, I was an Emir, I was a dethroned Emir. I’m an Emir. That is all what I am.
That’s all what I am. But I take pride that all the friends who knew me 50 years ago will say I am the same person that they knew 50 years ago, and that is who I am. You may not like it, but that’s who I am.
Can we please begin to ask ourselves and stop taking pride in these ephemeral, fake things that we have? People get into power. They clothe themselves in power given to them by the Constitution and the law, and they think it belongs to them.
People struggle to get into office, and they have no idea what to do with it.
You go to office and you make money. Why do you want to go into politics to make money? Go into business.
Look at Aliko Dangote. He’s not a governor. He has money. Go and be an Aliko Dangote. Why do you want to be a governor or a minister to make money? If you want money, go and be a businessman.
You go into government to serve the people. If you do not want to serve the people, don’t go into government. Simple.
But the way we’ve degraded public office and the way civil society—you—we go back to Antonio Gramsci—the way civil society has allowed itself to be incorporated into the processes and programs of political society is what has destroyed this nation.
Who is there to hold political society to account? Where is the Nigeria Bar Association? Where is the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)?
Where are the Hassan Sumonus of today? Where are the journalists? Where are the academics? Where are the public intellectuals?
Everybody has gone into political society. Everybody. If you are not in there, you are looking for a contract, or you are looking for an appointment, or you are looking for some favor, and therefore you cannot face political society and hold political society to account.
And this is exactly what Antonio Gramsci talked about when he analyzed the hegemonic state, and this is what we are becoming.
So I’m speaking at an NBA conference because you are a critical part of civil society. You are the ones who signed up for human rights. You are the ones who signed up for the rule of law.
I thank my brother, Femi Falana. When we had this funny judgment by the Federal High Court, he came out and spoke about it. I’m not a lawyer, but even as a non-lawyer, I know the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction on chieftaincy matters.
So I can’t believe that the lawyers who took the case didn’t know. I can’t believe that the judge who ruled didn’t know. They all knew.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal was what everyone expected. But for eight months, we have had a perverse judgment driven by politics, and these are the kinds of things that we need to stand up to or to stand up against.
Finally, I would like us to please pray for our country, because we do need prayer.
I think there’s just so much happening now. But the only good thing for me as an economist is I know that no matter how long a crisis is, with the right policies, you come out of it. This darkness is not going to be here forever.
Let us remain hopeful. Let us all work in our own way to contribute—advice, criticism, bringing investors—and also, let us see the good in our country, because there is a lot of good that’s happening as well.
Maybe not where we are looking, but let us continue to look at the good things and hope that we’ll see more and more of that.
I’d like to thank you once more for giving me the honor. It is a great honor for me to speak on behalf of someone that I consider a personal hero.
I would like to hope that after this, we are going to see more and more Gani Fawehinmis in the legal profession.
Thank you.
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