GANI FOR BURIAL SEPT 15

Tuesday 08-09-09

 

The remains of the late Lagos lawyer, rights activist and Lagos lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN) will be buried in his hometown, Ondo in Ondo State next Tuesday, September 15.
This was disclosed to newsmen on Sunday during a press briefing held in his Ikeja GRA residence by his eldest son, Muhammed Fawehinmi.

According to Muhammed Fawehinmi, the late human rights icon would begin his final journey home today with lying-in-state programme at his residence which will commence by 2.00p.m. During the lying-in-state, members of the public would have opportunity to pay last respect to the fallen hero.

This will be followed by another lying-in-state at the Lagos State High Court, Igbosere tomorrow at 10.00a.m where he started his career in the legal profession.
On Wednesday, the body of the fallen icon would be moved to his newly completed Law publications office, at Alausa, Ikeja where he publishes the most popular law reports in Nigeria, the Nigeria Weekly Law Report (NWLR).

According to Fawehinmi, the burial arrangement would be elaborate as several stakeholders including the Lagos State government were going to be involved.
“Certain activities are going to be carried out. There is a mosque he helped to build. He asked to be buried in the house he built for his mother in Ondo,” he said.

He explained that the burial was postponed till next week because of the Ogun festival which the Ondo people are observing in the town, which also involved restriction of movement.
“That is why we shifted the actual burial for Tuesday. My family including my mother, step mother and siblings and extended family had to do things on the spur of the moment,” he said.
According to him, the prolonged strike by the Association of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was a major source of concern to the late lawyer and he actually wanted the Education Minister, Dr. Sam Egwu sacked.

“My father gave me a categorical instruction on what was taking place in the country: the issue of the ASUU strike. “It is an embarrassment, I will say it categorically, as a student who has enjoyed all the educational facilities in this country before going abroad for further studies and my brothers are still benefiting from them.
“Sam Egwu has embarrassed this country. When the members of the press asked him: ‘Sir, don’t you know what’s going on in the country?’ He replied that ‘you can see, I’m conserving champagne. I’m only serving minerals.”

I don’t know where minerals will amount to N120 million. “I believe Egwu is a destructive man and I must categorically say that he might be an Igbo man but he is not an exemplary one.
“My advice to President Yar’Adua, now, I wish my father was here to say it himself is that having been a former rebel, a lecturer in a Nigerian university and now the president of this country. He should not have made the mistake of making a man like Dr Sam Egwu minister of education in this country.

“Now, Egwu, conclusively, has destroyed the educational system in this country because this is the first time in the history of this country that primary schools and secondary schools will be on strike,” he said.
“The educational system is at a standstill and Sam Egwu, they should sack Sam Egwu immediately,” he said.
He lamented the state of the nation education, which he blamed on lack of visionary leadership and pursuit of wrong priorities.

Fawehinmi wondered why a whopping N420 billion should be injected into banks whose missing assets and loans were easily traceable, adding that if N400 billion was injected into the university system, no university anywhere in the world would be able to match the nation’s universities.
“The average Nigerian brain is a genius brain. In the world, anywhere you find Nigerians, their position is between 1st and 5th. For instance, we have had Nigerians who have been president or head of surgeons throughout the world.”

He enjoined both the Senate and the House of Representatives to be focused on those things that would revive the nation particularly in the area of education, health and infrastructure.
Said he: “If the health system was fully developed, Gani Fawehinmi would have been sitting here with us. Cancer is a dangerous and terminal disease. Yet, it is curable.

“We should stop spending money on useless things and focus on the main things.
“Section 18 of the Constitution states that we should have policies, strategies, tending towards free education at all levels: primary, secondary and tertiary.
“On behalf of Gani Fawehinmi’s nuclear family, we thank the press, our well-wishers. Like someone said, we have to continue celebrating Gani. He is a man who has done what no other Nigerian has done. We can all aspire. We need to revamp our priorities. The Federal Executive Council should look into what could benefit the people.” 
 

Back to Home Page