Nigeria - Mr. Gani Fawehinmi: I Beg To Disagree

9 September 2009

By Adebiyi Jelili Abudugana

I have been an ardent follower of the late legal luminary and was auspicious to have read a number of books that were authored by him. Similarly, I have listened to him speak on a number of occasions and was able to know more about his courtroom affairs from legal luminaries who are his friends and foes. Until he succumbed to the cold hands of death following a lung cancer disease he has since been battling for a while, Gani was a man who treasured arguments that are rich for their rationale and logical values. It was this panache that chiefly accounted for his success as somebody who practiced, researched and published law. Gani was the type who will never keep mute when statements which stab facts on its face are being made before he will deliver an atomic rejoinder, mindless of being in the public or private. Based on this quality of our late illustrious personality, do I wish to say Gani’s premise for the delay of his burial was not founded as he seems not to have the slightest understanding of why Islamic burial rites is the way it is.

Gani who was until his death a Muslim who never doubted the faith which he proclaimed all through his moments in life. In one of his interviews where he was asked about his mother, Alhaja Muniratu Fawehinmi, Iya Olori egbe Adinni of Ondo Central Mosque, Gani proclaims that she would recite the Qur’an from the daybreak till dawn all for his sake. Quoting the text verbatim and the background context in which he provided the answer will be more illustrative. Did it ever occur to you during the sickness the roles your late mum played in your life?, asked the interviewer. Passionately and emotionally, Gani replied, “My mother! (a long silence and weeping). That woman should not have gone. But God knows better. My mother came to live for me and used religion to support me…My mother will fast and fast and pray, reading the Holy Qur’an from morning for following morning, only for one purpose: His son, Gani. The day she died, I knew I missed something. I missed something fundamental in my life. My mother was more than a mother. She was like a God-sent spirit for me. When God took her away, there must be purpose for that. But, the woman did her best, she cannot be re forever.” To further demonstrate his dying love for his mother he said, "my mother was everything to me. After God, she is next. She was closest to me more than any other being alive and she knows me more than any other human being." Fawehinmi added that his late mother was the go-between, between him and God. "The bond between us was divine, spiritual and religious." While this clearly demonstrates Gani’s love for his mother, a dying divine love, it also establishes the basis of the love, which from all indications was mainly religious. This interpretation becomes clear when one takes discerning gaze into how he used the words, “The bond between us was divine, spiritual and religious,” to explain the relationship between him and his mother. In another sense, this shows Gani’s affinity for his religion as a source of inspiration and protection and perhaps points to where he pledged his commitment. To do this, that is, seek for protection, a number of his colleagues, young and old will rather get initiated into one Ogboni fraternity or the other. In his tribute to the late epochal figure, Owei Lakemfa’s observation on how Gani reacted to the news of Ibrahim Dasuki as the Sultan of Sokoto highlights Gani’s passion for his religion. Owei writes, “One day I visited him and off hand raised the issue of Ibrahim Dasuki becoming the Sultan of Sokoto, to my shock Fawehinmi started weeping. He wondered how anybody could have made Dasuki the Sultan which automatically made him head of the Muslims in the country; and Fawehinmi was a Muslim!” All these clearly establish Gani’s consciousness of the need for religion and that Islam was that which can fulfill his religious thirst.

While anticipating his death, as revealed by the family, Gani had a deliberation with his wife, Ganiyat, instructing her on how he was to be buried. The funeral as narrated is to be elaborate and that his body, not be interred on time, because Nigeria is not Saudi Arabia where it is necessary that corpse be buried on time due to its weather conditions. The burial instructional plan, particularly the one which bothers on the delay of the corpse’s internment can be said to be of two-legged interpretations. One, Gani’s recognition of Islam as a religion for which he lived and on whose principle his burial should be based and two; his conception of the urgency with which Muslim corpse are buried as Saudi’s culture or of its impacts on Islam. If this statement, as claimed by the family, was truly uttered by the celebrated Gani Fawehinmi, then, our beloved icon got it wrong on all fronts. On the basis of simple logic, our erudite lawyer has demonstrated that he was not well informed about the biological process of decomposition in both the desert and in the tropics. By locating his argument within the varied type of tropical weather conditions in Nigeria , it would have been wise that he instructed that his body be buried on the day of his demise. This owns to the fact that decomposition is faster in humid environment. So, our learned fellow did not put to use, logic and the appropriation of basic climatic fact into consideration, before making his claim. Also, Gani was well educated enough to know that Islam is a religion, a complete way of life and not a thing being practiced by the people of Saudi Arabia . Possibly, it was the reality of this fact that prompted him to bury his late mother in consonance with Islamic burial arrangements. If Islam were to be a cultural manipulation of Saudi Arabia , then, its premise as a religion becomes questionable. Although I am damn sure that such thought would not have crossed our friend’s mind, both his alleged allusion that burial of course was often expedited in Arabia signifies the impact of environment on a people’s culture. Better put, what he said fits into construing religion using the perception frame of culture and environmental determinism. The pre-Islamic Arabia was not used to burying their corpse as it is with Islamic principles because a corpse may spend months without being interred why some corpses were only left to rot away in the desert. It was such a crude practice which did not dignify a dead body. As a Muslim, who strongly believed in accountability and in the pillars of the faith, it would have been more befitting for Gani to be buried according to Islamic rites. The look of the ongoing arrangement will make Muslims who are sticklers to principle not to observe janazah on his dead body because doing so, will translate to rubber stamping a culture or practice which is alien to Islam. If it were to be Gani who adeptly believe in such rites, I am sure he will also keep his distance. Adoption such position is Ganifawehiministic.

The issue of a befitting state burial raises another concern as there are cynical emergent signals about its authenticity and relevance. Is it by taking Gani’s corpse round the length and breadth of the world that he will become more popular? I do belief that what the late prodigy had done all through his life are enough to immortalize him and not the ongoing arrangement. I find it difficult to imagine if Gani who is now dead will rise from the grave to prevent state involvement in his burial as signals are suggesting. According to one of his sons, Saidi Fawehinmi, there is no harm in state’s participation in his burial. Saidi seems to have expressed the family’s gesture in partnering Ondo state government in working out a befitting burial. The question to be asked are, did Gani distinguished between one government or the other which should be allowed a role in his burial?, and, was he any categorical that no government involvement be permitted? In a related counter and unconvincing pronouncement, Mohammad Fawehinmi declared that the late Attorney of the Masses have sufficiently planned for his own burial. In his words, “My father was comfortable before he died and he left a lot of things. He was not a man that begged anybody for anything. My father had prepared the fund for his burial long before he had his illness, this was about five to six years ago. He prepared for his casket, the glass type, the lying-in-state and other arrangements.” Time will tell if government fund will be indirectly or directly involved. However, whatever the level of government involvement, be it partially or wholly, the fact remains that it will be seen as a compromise of a life long principle and clean slate which Gani was trying to keep. If care is not taking, this might end up denting the image and integrity of the late hero. My apprehension is heightening every passing second as I cannot envision some comrades, otherwise known as the olobes’ trying to play a leading role in the procession and the burial plan. Olobe is a term used in designating comrades who are smart in exploiting any available opportunity to make both ends meet. The word which derives from obe, a Yoruba word which means soup metaphorically means, someone who trades the struggle for money. State burial will on all accounts provide a level plain ground for the olobes’ to find their levels because what is almost sure is that the cost implication of their roles in the burial arrangement will be forwarded to appropriate government houses and international funding agencies. I hope they will prove wrong on this occasion and while awaiting endlessly, I hope to keep my fingers crossed.

On the parting note, it is also my humble opinion that it would have been more honourary if Gani had instructed that some individuals do not move closer to his body. With the state burial option, he has issued them admittance ticket. Consequently, it may be difficult for a repeat of the tragic Anthony Adefuye’s drama. It may be necessary to recount the Adefuye saga because of some readers who are not familiar with the story line. The Adefuye drama was one of the many burial scenes of the late MKO Abiola, the undeclared winner of June 12 presidential elections. Following his death, the who is who in Nigeria politics and activist camps, particularly from the South-West, felt it was their responsibilities to honour the late business magnate and more importantly, coordinate his burial arrangements. Some of these individuals had forgotten their reprehensible roles in the invalidation of June 12 and how they contributed to the stabilization of Abacha’s regime. A number of them who thought the mourners were not well acquainted of such roles of theirs were booed and some marginally rough handled. The most unfortunate of these turncoats was Senator Anthony Adefuye, who was outrightly rough handled by groups of student activists who were in Abiola’s residence. His clothes were turn apart and the helpless Adefuye, was screening like a new born baby, begging his children’s mate, Ejo Sir, E forijimi- please sir, pardon me. A friend of his family, told me that it took the shameless Adefuye to narrate his ordeal to his in-laws how he was eventually smuggled out of the scene through the fence. That was senator Adefuye, made to pay the price for betraying a popular course, a crime which caused him national embarrassment because the clip of this drama was aired and used as front page headlines by the mass and print media respectively. We have lost a golden opportunity to teach traitors another lesson of their lives. If IBB deem it fit to pay Gani a state visit, it will be illogical and immoral to assault him because our friend, Gani, demanded for a state burial which must attract a person of Maradona’s pedigree. Is it any possible for state properties and landlords like IBB, Jeremiah Useni, Bode George, Tonny Anenih, Obasanjo, Atiku Abubakar, Fayose, Alameseighia, Arthur Nzeribe but to mention a few, not to grace an occasion so declared as a state function or burial.

In summary, on the basis of Islamic principles, the decision is a ‘procedural breach,’ as so pronounced by as Dr Bashir Aliyu Umar. On the ground of the principles for which Gani stood all his life, the state burial of a thing is uncalled for. While begging to disagree with Gani based on the reasons so far marshaled, I stand to be educated.

The author, Mr. Adebiyi Jelili Abudugana, was a former student leader in UNILAG

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