A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, on Wednesday said that the 36 state governors were not making full use of the powers granted them under the constitution of Nigeria.
He also described restructuring as a Southern language insisting that Northerners must be carried along if restructuring of Nigeria must work.
Speaking at the 16th Gani Fawehinmi Lecture/Symposium in Lagos on Wednesday, Agbakoba noted that there was a need to lower the “temperature of the language of restructuring to carry the North along” and convince them that restructuring did not mean separation of the Federation units.
He argued that Nigeria was not a liberal democracy; hence it might be difficult for the political elite to agree to restructuring.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria and one time President of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) posited that the tempo of activism has drastically reduced in Nigeria compared to days of late Chief Gani Fawehinmi.
“The Gani spirit is lacking among present day activists. If we want restructuring, we must be ready to pay the price. It is not about grammar.
“Also, if the South cannot accommodate the North for restructuring to work, then we should go for corporate democracy,” he said.
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Agbakoba took a swipe at the governors insisting that though Nigeria was not a liberal democracy, they had enough space to do more than they were currently doing for their states.
He therefore challenged lawyers to write letters to the 36 states governors and ask them why they were not using the powers given to them by the constitution to develop their states.
Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Tayo Oyetibo, who spoke on whether the Judiciary was under Siege by the Executive, said that disobedience of court orders by the executive arm amounted to an attack on the judiciary.
“When a Chief Justice of Nigeria is removed by the executive through an agency that openly admits to being answerable to the executive, when judges receive nocturnal visits from masked agents of agencies of the executive, when a citizen who has been in detention at the hands of an agency of the executive is granted bail and then is forcefully removed from inside the court room, then we ought to know that perilous times are upon us,” he said further.
Oyetibo pointed out that the rule of law and the principle of separation of powers were critical to the success of any democracy stressing that subversion of the constitution by the executive arm through disobedience of court orders constituted an attack on the judiciary.
Acknowledging that the judiciary was not perfect, he maintained that the executive must not resort to self help in the guise of correcting the judiciary.
He also challenged the Bar not to relent in ensuring the independence and sanctity of the judiciary.
In his welcome address, the Chairman of the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) organisers of the annual lecture, Dele Oloke, described late Gani Fawehinmi as a “human rights colossus, a legal Titan, a cheerful giver whose relevance to the Nigeria society while he was alive remained unparalleled and could not be diminished by his human shortcomings.”
He noted that Gani in all his travels in the hands of the State, “was unwavering in his beliefs and convictions that only strict adherence to the concept of the Rule of Law – an independent and non-pocketed judiciary which will aid constitutional democracy – is the premise upon which a just and egalitarian society can be founded and nurtured.”
He lamented that several years after his demise; another Gani Fawehinmi has not arisen.
At this year’s event, Mr. Mayowa Abiru who was the best graduating First Class student of the 2019 Bar Final Exams of the Nigeria Law School out of 141 1st Class graduating students received N200, 000 under the NBA Ikeja/Chief Gani Fawehinmi Annual Scholarship for best graduating student in the Bar Final Exams of the Nigeria Law School programme.
