Why I confronted Gani
By
THE Oputa Commission on Violation of Human Rights means many things to many people. To the government, it is a body, which should listen to those who believe that their rights had been infringed by government or agencies of government. To citizens, many views were expressed. Some thought it was an opportunity to take government and its agencies on for the harm that had been done under the cloak of national security. To others, this was the time to be heard publicly on matters which had been subject of protests over time. Specifically, what better opportunity would those who had been woven into coups d’etat have than go before the commission and tell how they had been dehumanized.
For almost a year after it had been set up, nothing seemed to be happening. Then as if from the blues, the commission came to life. There, before everybody was President Obasanjo himself testifying, and later embracing Col. Fadile who had schemed him into a coup he knew nothing about. If nothing else, therefore, this commission was going to turn itself into one for speaking the truth, clearing your mind of the tension that has clogged it over the years, and restoring health to your system. I doubt that Oputa and his colleagues ever bargained for the drama that would come with the presence of Mustapha, Diya, Baimayi, Sabo, Gani and yours sincerely.
The tragedy of the Oputa commission is that many would readily vote for freeing those who killed sleep and would have been made to sleep no more. But they were all there, manipulating the emotions of the people who gleefully clapped and hailed those who were seen to be revealing the iniquities of the past and the role which those in high rulership positions played in entrenching them. The final effect of the hearings was that people would go away with certain impressions, right or wrong. When, therefore, I saw my very good friend, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, at the commission creating, in my view, the impression that I played a role in the death of Dele Giwa, I thought I would get down there and clear a few things. I was Dele’s next of kin in Lagos.
We come from the same local government area in Edo State. I was instrumental to his coming over to Nigeria. He hosted me in the United States when I went there. It was Dr. Dele Cole as managing director who had to bring him, but I was to make or unmake him as editor. I made him features editor and bought a typewriter for him to churn out three columns a week. Everyone in the Times knew how much I withstood the protests from Dele’s colleagues who accused me of giving him preferential treatment. He later moved to the Concord as editor of the Sunday paper. He consulted me before he left and I told him he would leave there in disgrace unless he wore the thinking cap of the proprietor. When he ran a contest of best dressed persons and published a finding that he was better dressed than his proprietor, I warned him of bad days ahead.
He later left and, with Ray, Dan and Yakubu, started Newswatch, which heralded today’s brand of newsmagazine journalism. The four of them came to me when I was general manager of Times Publications to brief me on their mission. They came not because I had more to tell them that they could not access elsewhere but because of my relationship with Dele. Dele was no enemy of security agencies. It was Dele and Alex Ibru who advised the getting together of security operatives and media executives in October of 1986. That was my first official media/security outing as minister. I moderated the get-together at the officers mess in Lagos. Akilu was a key player at that forum. He thanked Dele and Alex for advising such an outing and they all agreed that such meetings should be held from time to time. When I saw Gani on television asserting certain decisions taken at that meeting, I wondered whether that was the meeting I moderated.
Dele’s death occurred less than two weeks after. That Sunday afternoon, I drove straight to Newswatch offices at Oregun. I said that no stone would be left unturned and no turn unstoned in probing the death of Dele Giwa. The following day, one newspaper reported that I said there would be a judicial inquiry into the death of Dele Giwa. I denied ever promising a judicial probe because I was not in a position to promise what only the AFRC had power to order.
For the whole period, I was in government, there was hardly any forum I did not answer questions on Dele Giwa and my emphasis that I believed the police would be the first and last port of call in finding the killers. A judicial probe would only discover that he died of a bomb blast sent to him in a parcel. The probe would then recommend further police investigations. The report would go to the government and gather dust just as other reports, like the unknown soldier that burnt down the Kalakuta Republic of Fela, have done over the years.
When in spite of all these, I saw my friend Gani on television asserting that Tony Momoh was the only civilian member of the AFRC when Dele was bombed by the Babangida government; that Tony Momoh promised a probe and later came out and said the death would not be probed; and that Tony Momoh was giving out medals to journalists for their professionalism and investigative abilities but failed to do his work in identifying Dele’s killers, I thought he had gone beyond the level of fairness. In the first place, I was never a member of the AFRC and he knows it. Only military men were members of that body and if Col. Tony Ukpo who was minister of information before I took over was one, it was not because he was Minister of Information but because he was part and parcel of the change of government in 1985.
Only two civilians were in attendance at the AFRC meetings - Prince Bola Ajibola as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and Chief Olu Falae as Secretary to the Government. It would have been an honour for me to be a member of that highest law-making body of this country, but I was not. But why would Gani play so much on my membership of a body I did not have the privilege of belonging to? I had to find out. That was why I went to the Oputa Commission. My encounter with Gani was meant to put a few things right. I still respect him and praise him for his commitment to fighting the wrongs of history.
But he should not be seen to be dramatizing a situation in such a way that people, like yours sincerely, would wonder whether there is some agenda other than that before the commission - the dastardly killing of Dele Giwa and who did it.
The writer is a former editor of Daily Times and Nigerian Information Minister