Femi Falana Versus The Progressives

Garba Mustapha

Femi Falana’s (the Lagos lawyer, activist and politician) recent comment on the silence of National Association of Nigerian Students’ NANS on what is obviously a coordinated campaign of the camp of the so-called Progressives against Professor Maurice Iwu caught my attention. My first reaction on reading Falana’s expression of despair with the disposition of NANS to the Iwu matter was surprise. I have always known it to be the culture of the likes of Falana to intimidate and abuse those who do not share their perspective on certain national issues or act in their very predictable ways. Even if a member of their gang dares to differ, contrary to their espoused position, he is surely going to be tagged and blackmailed as a “sellout”. You need to understand this background to comprehend how Femi Falana’s mind works and why he berated NANS, whose voice he said “had not been heard against the fraudulent elections since INEC allegedly began to fund the association”. If Falana alleges that NANS is now under the undue influence of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, questions the former Ekiti state governorship aspirant must be asked are: when, in the history of NANS did INEC attain such paymaster status to NANS? If NANS is now suddenly for sale, then who was the previous paymaster before INEC took over? What went wrong in the relationship between NANS and the Falana’s ‘Progressives’? And finally, why would Femi Falana now direct his “friendly fire” at NANS just for the sake of Professor Iwu?

I should know the Progressives’ modus operandi and thought process. I came to this knowledge as an undergraduate on campus, their breeding ground. I knew them as stirrers and eternally antagonistic group with stock-phrase speaking and routine words memorized from Marxist literatures and mainly Walter Rodney and Frantz Fanon books. These books were obligatory ritual for aspiring members and the ability to quote them by rote would have made you “conscientized” (their term for brainwashing) - a qualifying membership prerequisite. To do otherwise, you are maligned as a bourgeoisie or one possessing such tendencies. There is this experience I had with one we would regard those days as a “Femi Falana boy”. I recall that run-in with amusement to this day. A certain guy (name withheld), who today is a national voice in the Progressive camp, denounced me vehemently for eating a piece of cooked egg. Coming from an abject financial background, to eat an egg was a luxury to his queer understanding. As typical and by his definition, I was tagged a ‘bourgeoisie’. However, some months later, when his lot became a little better economically, that is, only when he became a member of the students union government, I met my Progressive friend with a tin of Milo, milk and the same egg I was accused. That is the lot of the Progressive’s hypocrisy; that was my experience; that was my first awakening to the underbelly of Falana and Co.

I am very familiar with the protest politics of Nigerian Progressives or activists to be deceived by their ploys. The statement credited to NANS PRO, Agbabiaka Ahmed on the position of NANS on the Iwu–must-go campaign laid credence to my earlier experience and should be a lesson to those who do not know how the Progressives work. According to the NANS PRO on the anti Iwu crusade, “some of us are discussing with a Lagos based lawyer and human right activist but NANS as a body has no position on the Iwu must go campaign”. As impeccable in character and popular as Progressives always want to portray themselves and their views on national issues, they are often times goaded by pecuniary interest, no matter how highly placed. It was not a surprise when it was revealed that the resurgent campaign against Iwu has been paid for up to the sum of N100m by a certain Governor to be shared to groups who participate in the exercise. The vilification of NANS is therefore as a direct result of NANS’ refusal to accept the bribery–for-protest campaign by the same people that have always used the organization in the past. In other words, this is a new NANS that Femi Falana suddenly realized he can no longer use at will. That explains why he is mixing things up by taking on Professor Iwu and NANS all at once as if NANS also umpired the 2007 elections at issue.

In the event of the Orkar coup of 1990, NANS was promised membership of the highest decision-making body if the coup succeeded. In the frenzy of the elevation of the student body and the overthrow of a dictatorial IBB regime, students on campus trooped to the room of the then NANS president, who is now a second term commissioner in Lagos state for policy direction. NANS position, as the president pronounced in his address was very disappointing to almost all the teeming students. NANS would not be part of any military regime no matter the position it was offered. I have always held in high esteem this former NANS president for his wisdom. However, a recent encounter with an ‘insider’ revealed that the laudable decision was actually taken by the ‘senior NANS executives’ in Lagos. The revelations this insider made about the character of certain Lagos-based lawyer and activist were too damning to be printed here.

People like us should understand Falana’s frustration with his inability to recruit NANS to his campaign of animus against the person of Maurice Iwu. Again, I ask, what went wrong between NANS and the Progressives and at what time? I knew the Progressives would lose out from a rift that led to a crack in their camp in 1993. I stumbled on the story on this rift in the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM), an undercover political movement known only to initiates and the birth of Labour Movement (LM) as was reported in a University of Benin campus magazine at the time. The existence of PYM was a highly guided secret. You can therefore understand the monetary overtures made to the editor (the editor revealed later) by some human rights activists and PYM members through their undergraduate surrogates to buy all copies of the magazines to prevent Nigerians knowing its existence and activities. Thank God, the editor did not capitulate. The PYM comprised mainly of known human rights activists, graduate and undergraduates who operated openly as Youth Solidarity for South Africa and Nigeria (YUSSAN). The cause of the rift between the Movements was over sharing ratio of “activism dividends” and poor judgments on certain issues like the decision to accept the IBB largesse in the administration’s parley with student leaders at the Jos conference of 1993. The parley was necessitated by constant student restiveness then.

It is therefore not a coincidence that Nigerian students, over these years, have not been diametrically opposed to anything Government or resort to burning down properties of government and innocent people in the name of protests. For the first time in Nigerian students’ history, NANS is reacting to national issues based on their own perspective and judgment. Falana’s frustration with this is quite understandable; so is his aspersion on NANS as having been bought over by INEC. It is not necessarily the way of true Progressives like NANS, but as Falana’s personal frustrations with Professor Iwu grows, those in the know are not surprised that this is vintage Femi Falana – a control freak of the highest order and a turncoat Progressive who loves to confront strong men in authority. What bothers me is that Professor Iwu might just to be a test-run for more sinister designs Femi Falana has on President Yar’Adua that he continues to see as unfit to govern.

Mustapha is a public commentator garbanaija@yahoo.com