- Saraki’s arraignment before CCT will die a natural death
- Why Awolowo, Aminu Kano’s alliance did not fly in 1979
- I didn’t betray Awolowo in 1983 by running against him
- Nigeria not yet free of military opportunism
SECOND Republic Politician, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite is not
happy over the deep rot in the polity occasioned by mindless graft
especially among the leadership class. This was the reason he made
eradication of corruption (clearing rats, mosquitoes and cockroaches)
the fulcrum of his presidential campaign in 1983 when he ran on the
platform of the Nigeria Advance Party (NAP) which he founded. Currently,
Braithwaite says President Muhammadu Buhari has not started fighting
corruption despite claims to the contrary. He said the arraignment of
Senate President Bukola Saraki before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT)
is a misstep that will make Saraki a free man soon in spite of the
criminal charges slammed against him. Braithwaite, who has been
practising law since 1961, in this interview at his Victoria Island,
Lagos home, fears that Nigeria is not completely free of military
opportunism and its influence in the polity. Going down memory lane, he
disclosed why Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Malam Aminu Kano could form an
alliance in 1979 and why he ran against Awolowo in 1983 in spite of
their closeness.
By Clifford Ndujihe
, Deputy Political Editor
His take on Chief HID Awolowo’s death
I see Mama’s passing not as a sad event at all. At 99, approximately
100, it is not a bad news. Having said that I know Mama HID very well
more than the public. The public saw her with the Unity Party of Nigeria
(UPN) government. Papa and Mama Awolowo were very close to me. They
were regular visitors here. The late Wole (Pa Awolowo’s son) used to
visit me.
On virtues Nigerians should learn from HID Awolowo
She was a hard working woman who supported her husband through thick
and thin. As Pa Awolowo himself described her, she was a jewel of an
inestimable value.
There are a lot of lessons that Nigerians should learn from her. In
terms of womanhood, she was not like those opportunistic wives of
military officers, who had one stupid project or the other, calling
themselves first ladies. We never heard her being called First Lady of
Western Region or anything and she never comported herself that way.
On what informed his closeness to the Awolowo family
It was primarily from Law. When he was in trouble before the trump-up
charge, I was a great supporter of him when they were doing the Coker
Inquiry. This, unfortunately, has been the bane of Nigerian politics. If
you have courage that they don’t expect you to have, they will set up
some form of inquiries tilted against you. That was why I started
supporting Chief Awolowo to his own surprise. He said to me and my
mother: ‘how could a young man like Tunji stick out his neck for a man
they considered finished?’’
You were part of the legal team before he went to prison…
Yes, even before they formally charged him when he was going through
the Coker inquiry with his trusted friends like old Maja and Chief
Shonibare. They were the three principal targets.
On Chief Olu Falae’s kidnap by Fulani herdsmen and freedom, last week
It is a sad news. That in this day and age, a public figure of
Falae’s standing, an upright man, a hard working one-time technocrat
could just be whisked away like that in broad day light is a sad
indictment of the present government.
Serious indictment
If a man like Falae could be beaten and whisked away like that, it is
a serious indictment which Nigerians will have to take seriously
especially the entire South.
Why the entire South?
Can you imagine people from the South, traders or something doing
that in the North? Of course not. How can Fulani herdsmen from the North
carry a prominent figure like that? Then, lesser figures are not safe. I
don’t know if they paid ransom or not. It would be worse if they paid
ransom. It is downright criminality, it should be punished. I am not
happy about ransom being paid to criminals.
Kidnapping should not carry jail sentence of less than 20 years.
You were close to Pa Awolowo. Why did you run against him in the 1983 presidential election?
I ran against him not because we fell out. I gave the reason to a
journalist recently but he did not get it. I was approached by people
from the Middle Belt, late JS Tarka’s people came here. They knew I was
very close to Chief Awolowo. That was in 1978, when General Olusegun
Obasanjo’s military regime was preparing to handover and called for the
formation of political parties.
Dr. Tunji Braithwaite
Before then, some young northern fellows, one of them was Dasuki, I
think Ibrahim was his first name, he was a middle level civil servant in
the Ministry of Internal Affairs at Ikoyi when late Chief Sunday
Awoniyi was the permanent secretary. It was Awoniyi that I knew very
well. In my professional capacity, I used to go there. I had many
corporate clients and the issue of business permit and expatriate quota
was a major part of any corporate lawyer. For instance, I registered
Julius Berger in this country.
So, to get expatriate quota for my foreign clients, I would go to see
Awoniyi because his ministry handled such things at Alagbon, Ikoyi here
because they had not created Abuja. This young Dasuki was the one who
would process it. He got to know me and he used to visit me when I was
living at South/West Ikoyi. This Dasuki was one of the young Turks for
Malam Aminu Kano in the North. And I was close to Chief Awolowo. So we
started talking. They knew my politics, I was writing articles attacking
northern hegemony. Still they came to me. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida
and Mohammed Gusau were also part of the young Turks for Aminu Kano.
And I was for Awolowo together with Alao Aka-Bashorun, Olu Onagoruwa,
etc. I was the leader of the young Turks for Awolowo. So, when the
military said they wanted to return the nation to politics, the two
sides said why can’t Awolowo and Aminu Kano team up to lead the country?
These boys asked if I could introduce them to Chief Awolowo. I was the
person who took Babangida and Dasuki to Parklane, Apapa where Pa
Awolowo lived and introduced them. The plan was Awolowo as the president
and Aminu Kano as the vice president should work together for the 1979
election.
Meanwhile, Tarka, the United Middle belt Democratic Congress (UMBC)
people who were associates of the Action group (AG) in the First
republic approached me and said: ‘Dr Braithwaite, this return to civil
rule is fraught with danger.’
Return to civil rule
I said, ‘how’? They said they had been victims of oppression for many
years in the North, and that was why they teamed up with the AG in the
First Republic but it did not help them much. I was reporting what they
said to Chief Awolowo every time they came. He too found it interesting
and he said, ‘all right, continue to listen to them.’ They wrote papers
and I was delivering everything to him. I was not convinced at first and
I was reporting to Awolowo. Meanwhile, Chief Awolowo’s inner core of
the AG was forming the UPN. He didn’t keep me out of such meetings. Then
after some time, Chief Awolowo said, ‘Tunji, be careful that these
people were not out to rip you off.
The people convinced me that if this country would realise its
economic and political potential, the next dispensation must be
revolutionary. They said, these military boys must be watched. The
people from the Middle belt knew the military boys, some of them were
also living in Kano. They said, ‘Tunji, we want a young fearless person
like you, a lawyer to form a distinct party.’ They turned out to be
right. They said they knew the military boys that the boys were
deceiving the Nigerian public. I told Pa Awolowo. He asked what I meant.
I said there were many things that needed to be changed in the Nigerian
Constitution. He said that would be too dangerous to them (AG), that
they would see us.
Pa Awolowo was the only one whose outlook came relatively closer to
what those boys wanted. Then we had a number of young university
lecturers of socialist bent. Pa Awolowo could not go half as
revolutionary as we wanted. When he said he could not, we formed the
Nigerian Advance Party (NAP). Our complexion was made clear, that we
wanted revolution. We will sweep out the corrupt element. We will probe.
That was where clearing the rats and cockroaches came into it. We said
we will deal with the military and all the people who had been
involved.
That was why the military registered the First republic parties in
their new names. They registered UPN, which was AG. They registered
Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), which was the National Council of Nigerian
Citizens (NCNC). They registered National Party of Nigeria (NPN), which
was the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). They also registered Aminu
Kano’s Peoples Redemption Party (PRP). In 1979, they did not register us
deliberately even though the PRP came to me the night before and said
they were sure that NAP had met all registration requirements. Aminu
Kano and SG Ikoku came to this house and said, ‘you are likely to be
registered, should we form an alliance?’ I said, ‘yes’ because they were
the nearest to us.
NAP was finally registered in 1983, what happened?
We had gone to civilian rule then. Before the handover, the military
asked us to dismantle our operations. We said no. they harassed us but
we did not dismantle. We had structures because from 1978 to 1983 we did
not stop operation. We were going through the entire universities and
polytechnics. We were pretty strong and given our socialist and
revolutionary bent, they had no choice than to register us in 1983.
We were going strong. And we knew that something would happen to that
regime. In fact, President Shehu Shagari sent Alhaji Umaru Dikko to me
to say that the information was that if he was declared the president
after the election, the military would intervene. And that he was
advised that if he invited NAP, PRP and the Great Nigeria Peoples Party
(GNPP) there was a possibility that the military would not intervene. I
met him one-on-one at the State House. We declined. There were a few
offers made to us. We declined. Given our socialist revolutionary bent
we were not ready to form an alliance with these bourgeois
neo-colonialist groupings.
Didn’t Awolowo feel betrayed?
He was not betrayed at all. In fact, what he said was that he did not
know that I was that serious a politician. He thought our relationship
was based on law because I was passing briefs to him. He said he did not
realise I wanted to do politics that he only saw me as a man for
justice, human rights activism.
I can’t tell you many things, they will appear in my book but
certainly, he did not feel betrayed. I don’t want to disclose this yet.
Pa Awolowo regretted that I was not in the UPN because he said some of
those who were governors were not as useful to him as Tunji would have
been.
Mama HID Awolowo still sent such message at my 70th birthday through a
lawyer, Awoniyi, who worked in Awolowo’s chambers. So, there was no
question of betrayal. Pa Awolowo felt he should go with his old friends
in AG. I was not in AG.
His assessment of President Muhammadu Buhari administration so far
I spoke on a TV programme where people asked me questions on the
latest appointments that he made – chief of staff, secretary to the
government of the federation, etc, whether they were not slanted to the
North.
Latest appointments
I
said may be so but I have other insight to the latest appointments
because I know Buhari very well and he knows me. I said forget about the
northern slant and look at other more significant things. The date of
the announcement of those appointments was significant. The announcement
was made on August 27, which was the anniversary of the Babangida coup
that toppled Buhari in 1985.
I said people should think about that. Why would he make such pivotal
announcement on such an anniversary? People should think. We should not
take things on face value. So, it is clear to me that, Buhari for the
moment, is not thinking about North and South. My analysis is that
Buhari is thinking of the military. He wants to do something about the
Nigerian military. If you looked at his latest appointments, two of the
appointments were his former military colleagues. It shows that Nigeria
is not yet out of the woods when it comes to military opportunism and he
wants to clear his backyard first.
Much noise, no action against graft
We have heard a lot of noise being made about attacking corruption.
What has he done about attacking corruption four months after he was
sworn in? The fact that we are having better electricity supply and the
refineries are working cannot be what he has done.
His body language, may be. But what we got all this time is military
news. To me, he wants to make sure that military opportunists, military
looters, who are still very much around in the control and
administration of this country directly or through their proxies are
adequately handled.
How many people have been charged for corruption? Nobody. One
military fellow, Sambo Dasuki, the former NSA has been taken to a
Magistrates’ Court. Put your two and two together if you are a thinker.
What about Senate President Bukola Saraki being taken to the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT?
That is what I am saying. Saraki’s arraignment before the CCT will
die a natural death. The charges that I heard read against Saraki were
criminal, why take him to the CCT, which is like a bull dog without
teeth? The CCT has not got criminal power.
Where should Saraki have been taken to?
He should have been taken to a court with criminal power to send
people to jail if found guilty. The CCT cannot jail. You will find that
this circus show will die a natural death.
PRIMARY SOURCE
VANGUARD NEWS
