Ask Festus Keyamo... By Bola Bolawole

Journalism is one profession that every Tom, Dick, and Harry pretends to know how to practise; so was Festus Keyamo, SAN appointed Director, Strategic Communication (whatever that means!) for President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election bid. Their good grief! But in trying to explain why he took up the appointment (as if any serious-minded person needs such feigned justification), Keyamo elected to drag the name of our most venerable Chief Gani Fawehinmi in the mud.

Unable to stand on his own legs, Keyamo tried to twist and juggle the qualified support that Gani gave the Buhari/Idiagbon military junta of 1984/85 to justify why he chose to serve a failed, jaded, and divisive ruler like Buhari. Keyamo’s brazen attempt to re-write, indeed falsify, history before our very eyes fell flat on its face like defeated biblical Goliath fell before Goliath because we were all participants in some of the events he seeks to falsify. Gani Fawehinmi was well known to many of us.
We may all not have been lawyers and may not have worked in Gani’s chambers like Keyamo said he did but we knew and related with Gani on other levels. I, for instance, strode side-by-side Gani as we fought the many battles of The PUNCH newspapers against arbitrary closures and illegal proscriptions by the military dictatorship of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abachi.

I was editor of THE PUNCH/Saturday during those giddy days of military dictatorship following the annulment of the June 12, 1999 election won by MKO Abiola. I visited Gani at home and in his chambers and followed him to court to append my signature to court papers. I took “tutorials” from him and we attended court together.

Gani won the case for us and the military junta was ordered to vacate PUNCH premises and re-open the newspapers. A cost of N2million and N200,000 respectively was awarded against the Federal Government to PUNCH and my humble self. When the government failed to comply, we returned to court again and Gani filed an order of mandamus against the government and this time they complied and the PUNCH was re-opened.

So Keyamo is not the only one who knew Gani or who could talk about the legal titan’s beliefs and or principles. Many of those who knew Gani, including his family, will take exception to the very cheap politics Keyamo is trying to play with the name and legacy it took Gani decades of sweat, toil, blood, and suffering to build. Indeed, it was in the crucible of the struggle against fascism, some of which traits Buhari demonstrates today, that Gani picked up the ailment that was to eventually cut his life short; otherwise, he would possibly have been with us till day, and would have denied the Keyamos of this world the platform to brazenly and opportunistically leverage on his name to justify malady and exalt perfidy.

I was on the set of Lagos Television (LTV) station’s “Morning Delight” programme with Gani’s first son, Mohammed, on Monday, 22 April discussing the legacies of Gani and Mohammed wasted no time to take Keyamo to the cleaners.

Gani’s qualified support for the Buhari government was for the government in one particular respect and not for Buhari as a person. It was in respect of the war against corruption and indiscipline. Gen. Tunde Idiagbon, the brain box of that regime, made all the difference.

The absence of a Tunde Idiagbon or someone of his stature and character is what has seriously exposed Buhari’s second coming as a disappointment and monumental error of judgment on the part of Nigerians. Buhari’s second government s hollow, spineless, without focus, and without depth.

Gani was out for an all-out war against corruption, which Idiagbon waged relentlessly but which Buhari has proved incapable of waging. While it was possible for Gani to support the anti-corruption war of 1984/85, it is inconceivable he would have stomached the farce that presently parades as anti-corruption war. Were Gani to be alive, he would have gone to court to force Buhari to try Ibrahim Magu, Gen. Buratai, Malami, Maina, Babachir Lawal, Ayo Oke, Maikanti Baru, to mention but a few. Would Gani have stomached the recall of the NHIS boss who was interdicted for corruption and suspended by his boss, the Minister of Health?

Would Gani have ignored the damning memo from the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation indicted President Muhammadu Buhari on Maina-gate or would Gani have kept quiet of Maina-gate itself? If Gani were alive, would he have welcomed the Buhari administration’s flagrant disobedience of lawful court orders, especially as they pertain to Shiite leader, El-Zaczakky and former NSA, Sambo Dasuki?

Would Gani not have gone to court to challenge the hike in fuel price from N87 to N145 or the present N1.7 trillion fuel subsidy scam deal done under the counter? Would Gani not have filed a suit to demand that government disclose the humongous amount involved, which has made fuel subsidy payment under ex-President Goodluck Jonathan a child’s play? Ask Keyamo, if Gani were alive, would he have kept quiet over the herdsmen’s murderous atrocities all over the country and the inaction bothering on complicity of the Buhari administration? 

If Gani were alive, would he not have spoken against the nepotism and cronyism of the Buhari administration, especially the appointment of security chiefs from one religion and region? If Gani were alive, would he have kept quiet when Buhari went on medical tourism, spending more days than constitutionally allowed by the laws of the land and would Gani not have demanded full disclosure of the cost to Nigerian tax-payers?

If Gani were alive, would he have brooked the way Nnamdi Kanu of IPOB was run out of town by the Buhari administration? Gani would have asked questions concerning how Buhari’s election was funded. He would have challenged the party big-wigs who funded the election and the pay-back they now enjoy.

Gani would have picked holes in the governorship elections in Edo, Kogi, and Ondo that were obviously manipulated to produce governors from the president’s political party. Were Gani to be alive, the likelihood is that he would have so distanced himself from Buhari that Keyamo would never have been able to make the kind of provocative statements he is now making about the stormy petrel.

This is a clear case of what the Yoruba call “iku b’olaje”; meaning, death has ruined good things. Were Gani to be alive, he would have wasted no time in denouncing Keyamo and his ignoble appointment.

Even a suckling knows that the Buhari of today is a shadow of the Buhari of 1984/85. The president himself alluded to this fact when he bemoaned that he did not become president when he was relatively younger.

So, Keyamo should not compare sleep with death. He should calmly take his appointment and go try his best, for he has a mountain to climb. Do I wish him the very best? Not at all; not with the way he chose to take off!