It is saddening Nigeria is still battling with basic human needs —Pa Lagunju

Born on May 25, 1925, Chief Michael Ladipo Lagunju, a legal luminary of more than five decades is an enigma. At 93, he still dashes from one courtroom to the other. His routines also include waking up sometimes at 2.00 a.m to prepare briefs on behalf of his clients or buried his head in books in his Law library situated below his one-story residence. In this interaction with KUNLE ODEREMI, he speaks on the day Nigeria got her independence 58 years ago and some of her missed opportunities. EXCERPTS:

How would you describe the day Nigeria became independent from colonial rule 58 years ago?

It was a very memorable day. I was in London on that day as a law student and I can remember that the then Western Nigeria House was at Portland Road. The commissioner threw a big party to commemorate the historic event for all Nigerian students. So, anybody who was in London at that time as a student, as well as staff members of the Western House, would never forget that day, October 1, 1960, when Nigeria gained independence from Britain. It was good arrangement at the Western Nigeria House and the country also had the Nigerian House.  Things went well because the autonomy we gained on October 1, 1960 allowed us to to develop at different pace. I know that the infrastructure was not fully developed that time. Dual carriage roads were non- existent until after independence. So, independence heralded the era of infrastructural development in Nigeria.

Then, why is the country that started a jolly ride to freedom still wobbling?

Well I know that at pre-independence, Nigeria was a happy place to live in because our villages were booming with commercial products like cocoa in the Western region; palm oil in the East; in the north, you had cotton and groundnut, and we became famous for groundnut pyramid, because the product was stacked almost reaching the sky and money was going round. Unfortunately, today, our villages are in racks and ruin. I was an auxiliary teacher in a village called St John’s Akinagbo. The big markets in Akinagbo were Arulogun, Oyedeji, among others. On market days, the whole place would bubble with life. Sadly now, all those villages are gone; they have gone under. I visited my uncle’s village at Dali Momu, our boundary with Ijebuland about 2016. Tears were rolling down my cheeks to see what Dali Momu and Alajere villages have become. All the buildings in the villages have gone to ruins. I now asked myself, where are the farm settlements? In those days, there were farm settlements. If you left school and you had not got a job, the regional government would give you acres of land to cultivate and make a living. When I was an auxiliary teacher at Akinagbo village, we would wake up at 2am to rake water from the shallow well we dug in the area. We came back at 4 am with only one bucket of water. But, let me tell you, happiness was boldly written on the forehead of every Nigerian then, maybe because we were satisfied with the things that make life: good food. There was no crisis of diabetes, higher blood pressure; we lived a happy life.

However, 58 years after, we are still battling with the basic things of life that people once took for granted. I must say it is unfortunate. You now have all manner of people wanting to lead at various levels without any proven record of experience and pedigree. You see an individual, who has never been in politics, instead of starting from the level of a councilor to graduate to the higher level until he gets sufficient experience of political administration wanting to be, for example, governor overnight. What has he got to offer? Why must they take the electorate for granted? The people should ask questions on critical issues bordering on good governance; let them interview the aspirants. They should tell the people what programmes they hope to implement if elected. Let them face the public. But instead of doing that, what we do is to ask for gratification that you bring millions of Naira so that I can deliver a number of wards or constituencies. Where can this lead to? It is ridiculous. Somebody wants to be the governor of a state or a senator. They are quipping over whether he even read to possess a school certificate. I know that book is not what makes you a good politicians, but we must start from somewhere. When at least you are reasonably educated, you can read about what is going on in other parts of the world. You can listen to what is happening in other parts of the world and make a sound and reasonable judgment concerning state matters. You can then sit down and ask yourself, what can I do for my own country. That is where education becomes necessary. We are talking of enlightenment, and a person, who is not educated, can he be enlightened? He will refuse to be enlightened.

Do you nurse any fears about 2019 elections?

Talking about preparations for the 2019 election I think the people need to be re-educated; we need a proper enlightenment programme so that the electorate may see the way forward for the future of their children. The people who are selling their Permanent Voter Cards are mortgaging the future of their children. Those who sell their votes are ruining their own lives too, because where will a pot of porridge take them? There is serious problem in the land; people need proper education, enlightenment and general empowerment. Let the electorate realise that a political party has a proper manifesto its leaders will not be jumping from one party to another. So I think most of their leaders don’t even know what they are doing now. Take Oyo State for example, I understand there are about 30 governorship aspirants. Where does that take us to? Those who ought to have started from local council level want to be gubernatorial candidate. What do they understand about politics? The questions should be: what can I do for my state; how am I going to do it?

How many people who call themselves Christians are really having Christ in them? They too are not in Christ. Look at a woman selling drums at the popular OritaMerin in Ibadan. The pastor of a church went to her shop to buy a drum. In the process of trying to agree on the price, he said please sell it to me; I am a pastor. She replied, may God call you what you claim to be.  Look at that loaded expression. Many prophets today add to the burden of anyone that comes before them to seek salvation. So also among Muslims, how many Alfas that God will ever hearken to their calls? They all know they are false prophets because they do not call on God with a clear conscience. We are all sinners but if you sin and realise it, the Lord says, ‘I do not want the sinner to perish but that he repents and have salvation.’

They use ethnicity and language to divide us. The way the British colonial masters amalgamated us: northern region, western region and eastern region did not blend well. We began to see ourselves as conglomeration of completely different people. Anybody who travels by road from Ibadan for instance, to Abuja passing through five and six states will see that it is an unhappy marriage. When you leave Kwara, you could travel through eight villages without seeing a single police station. That is why security is terrible in the north. The Boko Haram problem thrives because in the northern part of the country, security has not been taken seriously.

• Osinbajo on restructuring

Another major problem is what I will call political mismanagement. Crude oil is God-given. But instead of using it for the people, we are using it for the benefits of only a few Nigerians. We give oil blocks to political leaders. That doesn’t make sense. It is selfish. A Hausa man would sit in his domain and would receive an alert that his oil block had yielded N25 billion, whereas Nigerians around him cannot afford three meals a day. Then, there is the issue of mismanagement of fund. Projects are abandoned shortly after they are initiated at a colossal amount of money.  Corrupt practices brought us to where we have found ourselves today, where human lives do not mean anything again killings here, assassination there. We only hear of billions voted for projects; contractors abscond with money having colluded with those in power. Where the political leaders may have taken their share of the fund, the contractor would only use a minute percentage of the remainder to do a shoddy job. When the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha was in power, he established a failed contract tribunal, that if you got a contract and failed to do it well, you would be arraigned. He also established the failed bank tribunal. It was in vogue then that some people would float a bank encourage people to deposit their funds there and after three years, the bank would go into liquidation. A person, who had N1 million in his bank, is given just N20, 000 once the bank goes under.  So, I thought our messiah had come when Abacha established those tribunals with the hope the policy would clear the Augean table. I am sorry that I didn’t know that he himself was a barawo until his blind looting of the treasury was uncovered.

When are you going to retire from active legal practice as you still go to court at 93 to represent your clients?

That’s a very good question. A lawyer does not retire from active practice; it is only death that retires us; but death has not come. I went to court on Wednesday and equally went on Thursday to handle cases.

Then, what is the secret behind your vigour?

It is my joy. I thank the Almighty God that by His grace and favour, I am blessed with good health. So, I am able to cope. The legal profession is my joy. From the upstair of my residence, I come down to my library to read if sleep does not come. Until sleep comes, I go back upstairs. To be a lawyer, you must be really interested in the profession and your enthusiasm does not stop as you handle charge and bail cases. You must really be interested in developing law. In the legal profession, it is your interest that matters and not the money. When you work hard, money will come.  When we were young at the Bar, it was our joy to do pupilage in the chambers of senior lawyers. We were prepared to learn and we learnt, but it appears the goal of many young lawyers today is money. If you accept some young lawyers in your chamber, don’t be surprised if you have to do three quarters of the work because I know the cost of living is higher. So young lawyers need money to maintain themselves and keep afloat. However, some would often want to cut corners. I have the experience in my chambers. When you send them to court, for example, in a land matter, instead of going for the land matter, they would go under the mango tree to do charge and bail because that will give them immediate money; whereas you would sit in your chamber without knowing that the young lawyer did not go for the land case. Recently, I sent a young lawyer to handle a case in Ijebu-Ode; it was an appeal for a person who had already been convicted, and he is serving his jail term in Ijebu-Ode. We filed the appeal. So, I asked the lawyer to see our client after filing the appeal in ijebu-Ode prison so that he would feel rest assured that we were handling his case for him. He concurred. The young lawyer asked for extra N2000 as fare. Suddenly, the convict phoned me from prison that he had been told that his matter had been struck out in the Magistrate’s Court. I almost fainted and when the young lawyer came into the chambers the following day, I confronted her with the information. She looked askance. So, I went to the magistrate’s court in Ijebu-Ode, only to be told that the case was indeed struck out in August 2017. I also gave my young lawyer N47, 500 to obtain the records of proceedings of the court, which we applied for but she did not bring the document as I was advised at the court to go and ask her.

On calls for restructuring

The issue of restructuring Nigeria is very necessary. I recall that when we had a regional arrangement, every region was able to face its own problem. There was healthy competition and less frictions unlike what we have today. We need to make one thing about the call for restructuring. I do not want to believe that there is any other ulterior motive than to evolve a system that is devoid of instability and injustice. In other words, restructuring does not mean we are going tearing the country into pieces. We are trying to move at the pace which will bring improvement to each region. Even recently, people started talking about the need to have local government police to tackle the problem of security in the country, it is not enough to have state police alone. In those days, we used to akoda (constabularies) for each local area. They were considerably effective. So, if we restructure Nigeria, each region will be able to face its own problem and learn to solve it.

Equally important is the question of putting so much money into the political arrangement; the system is killing us. Imagine what elected public officials and appointed ones from the local government level to the national level earn. There must power devolution for the country to progress and attain stability. I must say that the American system we are trying to copy America has not made politics as attractive as we have made it. We are not even practising the American system. What we are prasticing is neither the British system, nor the French model; it is amalgam of borrowed elements: a bit of American, British, French and so forth. So, we are neither here nor there.

Experience in politics

I was an independent candidate in 1965/66 for Ibadan North constituency. All the money I first made in legal practice in 1965/1966, I spent it politics. If you ask of me from Moniya to Ijaye Orile, people will admit they know me. Even when the recent political era came, they came to me that they need such people like me in politics to contest.  in 165/65, I was contested for a seat in the Western Region parliament. S. O. Lanlehin, the father of Femi Lanlehin, who is vying for governorship now, was standing on my right side for the AG; Ayo Ajibola, was standing on my left for the NNDP, while I stood as an independent candidate. Folarin Coker was the electoral officer for the region then. The late Premier of Western Region, S. A. Akintola; Chief A. M. AAkinloye was a stalwart of the NNDP; Chief Richard Akinjide was also of that party. They had threatened Akintola that if this young man called Lagunju should file a nomination paper in Moniya and killed a dog for them, they would eat it. The leader of Ibadan politics then, was Alhaji K. O. S Are of Oke Are. To cut a long story short, my political supporters left Ibadan for Moniya, but when Folarin Coker, saw them, he wanted to jump out through the window but the people warned him that he tried to escape, they were going to kill him. So, he went back into the room and filed my nomination paper. I drove straight back to Ibadan and went straight to the High Court to swear to an affidavit that I had filed my nomination paper. Then, on the fourth day, people now brought a copy of the then Daily Sketch where it was published boldly on the front page with the headline; Lagunju has withdrawn from the election and my signature was signed perfectly well. My supporters swung my house early that day saying they were ready to die with them. They said I failed to tell that I had concluded plan to withdraw from the election without informing them. . I said I had not withdrawn from the election. Quickly, they brought the newspaper to corroborate their claim. I almost fainted when I saw the paper and the screaming headline that I had withdrawn from the race. I said it was not true. So, I challenge Sketch, though I had threatened to sue them over the matter but my supporters said I should not waste my resources going to court. So, I became worried that this was the way we play politics in Nigeria That was how I backed out of politics. But any human being is a political animal. My people still come to me for advice.

However, in 1983, I went into politics under the umbrella of the defunct Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP). Late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was the leader. Chief AdeniranOgunsanya was the national chairman; while the late Janet Akinrinde was a leader of the party in Oyo State. I also wanted to be the gubernatorial candidate of NPP; Ogunsanya supported me; Janet Akinrinade supported another contender for the ticket. The other aspirant had a skeleton in his cupboard and I exposed it. The next thing was that people began to bombard me with phone calls from parts of the country that in my own interest, I should back out of the race otherwise, I would be assassinated. Because the threats compelled my family members to summon me to a meeting, where they warned that they still needed me in their midst; That was why I h ad to opt out of politics again. It was not the only trying moments I have passed through in life. In fact, I have had so many instances, including another close shave from death in 1983. We were returning from a campaign at Omi-Adio, near Ibadan when a drunk was set against me. I didn’t know he was trailing me from behind from Omi-Adio; we got to the Government College area in Apata; he rammed into my car’ I broke my clavicle; my humerus, had a gash on my forehead; I lost a broken tooth; it was a London hospital that saved my life; I had to fly to London for treatment. It was an NPP.