Akinjide and the Question of Principle
“Akinjide and I could have gone our different ways, perhaps barking at each other in the press – he calling me names as one of those ignorant journalists, and I calling him even more ignorant and a guerrilla lawyer. But for Adewusi.”
Richard Akinjide and I met for the first time after the elections in 1979 at the height of his jubilation over his twelve two-thirds magic. He invited me to a meeting on Sunday morning at his Ikoyi Hotel suite that he was using as a way house pending the completion of work on his official residence . The meeting was interesting for many reasons. Chief Akinjide spoke exuberantly of his importance in the government, something that was self-evident, considering the role he played in making the confirmation of Shehu Shagari as president less contentious. He also spoke of his love for journalism, a profession that he said he would have loved to pursue if he had not gone to read law. He then led me into his bedroom to show me the books that he was reading, three of them at once, and all marked at advanced stages of reading. But of more inerest to him were the assorted British newspaper spread all over his bed. He then turned to me, and told me how he enjoyed reading my two columns in the Daily Times, and that he was happy that Nigeria had a number of journalists that could match easily with the best of them nywhere else in the world.
I found the man interesting. He was warm, proficient and, judging from the literature in his room, prolific. And contrary to the stories flying around his so-called arrogance, Richard Akinjide addressed the young journalist that mornig with respect and camaraderie. Quite a number of things have happened since then to give a lie to my optimism. Akinjide had castigated the press a number of times, and this columnist has had to knock him for his unwarranted and unjustified attack on the press that he had claimed to love. We again met at a dinner in President Shagari’s house. It was a curious meeting in that I expected Akinjide to greet me warmly. But when President Shagari asked him whether he knew, Chief Akinjide stared blankly at me, and the president had to introduce us. Of course, I told the president that Akinjide and I knew each other quite well. No matter. We went through the rituals of hand-shaking, and I filed the incident away for use another day. Akinjide and I could have gone our different ways, perhaps baying at each other in the press – he calling me names as one of those ignorant journalists, and I calling him even more ignorant and a guerilla lawyer. But for Adewusi.
Sunday Adewusi, to be sure, is the inspector-general of the police who believes that he is the president of Nigeria. When Adewusi decided to make an example of me in his drive to “instill sanity in the Nigerian press,” he tried to use Akinjide’s ministry of justice in winning criminal charges against me and perhaps sending me off to jail for 42 years. According to the letters exchanged between them, the I.G. wanted me and the Concord Press prosecuted for criminal offences against the Official Secrets Act. From the face of things, the A.G. said he saw no grounds for such prosecution. He said he told the president so. The I.G. was, of course, angry, he took the whole matter to Shehu Shagari who said strangely enough that the government could send me to jail for 14 years if they were indeed sure that they could bring this off. The A.G. told the president that he didn’t think that they had a fire big enough to roast me at that time. When the pressure from the police became impossible, Akinjide found himself buckling and making a deal that calls into question the quality of his principle, his respect for law, and his understanding of his role as the attorney-general.
The last first. As the A.G., Chief Akinjide is everybody’s lawyer. He is to ensure that justice is done and the innocent is not unnecessarily punished. In my case, he had written that he saw no – at least technical – grounds to prosecute me. But, then, he had a proviso. If I failed to drop my suit against the government, then he would have no choice but to order the criminal case against me reopened. It was the case that Akinjide ordered withdrawn, an action that drew Adewusi’s ire. And indeed he had that case reopened as I had evidently refused to drop my suit against the I.G. for infringing on my fundamental human rights. The insulting letters written to him by the I.G. and his disingenuous claim in the media that his relationship with the I.G. was excellent bring into question the quality of his principle as a public official. Let me tell a story that Akinjide may be familiar with, but which you may not.
Nixon had lost his attorney-general, John Mitchel, to Watergate, and had appointed Elliot Richardson as his successor, on the condition by Richardson that he be allowed to name a special prosecutor of his choice to look into the Watergate mess. Nixon agreed, and Richardson appointed Archibald Cox. By October 1973, Cox had found too many skeletons in the closets at the White House, and he decided to sue Nixon for the Watergate tapes after the president refused to release them voluntarily. Since the tapes were the Pandora box of Watergate, Nixon reacted by ordering his attorney-general, Richardson, to fire Cox. Of course, Richard refused, and resigned rather than fire Cox. Nixon then named Richardson’s deputy, Ruckleshaus, as the new A.G. As soon as he was sworn in, all in less than 24 hours, he was asked to fire Cox. He, too, like Richardson before him, refused and resigned.
The outcry over the Saturday night massacre forced Nixon to appoint another highly respected lawyer as a special prosecutor, a man named Leon Jaworski, and Nixon voluntarily released the tapes to Jaworski. The contents of the tapes led to the resignation of Nixon as the president, because the words on thme got Nixon named as an unindicted co-conspirator, and the record of the charge was sent to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives for use in impeaching Nixon. And nobody had to tell Nixon what to do at that point. Ten years later, the heroes of the Saturday night massacre are remember fondly as men of integrity and high principle. They put the welfare of their country and their high respect for the law above partisan consideration in handing over the noose that hanged Nixon.
The exchange of letters between Akinjide and Adewusi provided an opportunity for Akinjide to transmit to President Shagari, Adewusi, others in the administration and the country at large that his respect for law, fail play and impartiality as the lawyer for all Nigerians were more important to him than the barking of an ill-informed police officer who was,anyhow, too junior to him in the first place. It is difficult to understand the vagaries that pressed and Akinjide to bend. He went ahead to re-open the case against me and the Concord Press of Nigeria, the same case that he had told Adewusi and Shehu Shagari that he didn’t believe the government could win. One should, equally, credit Akinjide for stemming Adewusi’s recklessness in refusing to grant consent to the I.G. to prosecute me for a third case for which I was locked up for one week. It would be interesting, though, to see whether Akinjide would buckle at some point in the future to the pressure from Adewusi on that very case. At an appropriate time, I shall write about how Shehu Musa and Muhammadu Gambo between them engineered my last detetion, and how Sunday Adewusi himself was turned into a tool in the hands of these two men.
©Sunday Concord, April 3, 1983
(Pp.212-215)
