My last encounter with Gani, by the author of his only biography

 I was really jolted by Gani’s death and it really pained me that he was not able to see my second book on him – Gani’s Book of Quotations which was a follow-up to the one I published in July, Prisoner J.60:  The Legal Struggles of Gani Fawehinmi. I had dropped copies of the second […]

 I was really jolted by Gani’s death and it really pained me that he was not able to see my second book on him – Gani’s Book of Quotations which was a follow-up to the one I published in July, Prisoner J.60:  The Legal Struggles of Gani Fawehinmi. I had dropped copies of the second book in his house a day before he died and they told me he was not at home. I thought it was just his normal routine visit to the hospital and that he would be back at home same day. I then left a note for him that I would come back next day to come back and see him. Unfortunately, he died that Saturday without seeing the book. If he had seen the book, he would have been quite elated because he so much appreciated the book.

 Did you foresee his death, considering the fact that you wrote a book on him recently?

 I didn’t foresee his death but I am of the firm conviction that our heroes should be celebrated while alive and not when they are gone and all manner of superlatives are used to describe them. That is why I am very upset with the attitude of our political elites who have been describing Gani in all manner of superlatives. I call them political mourners. They come to his house to pose for pictures. They are all bloody hypocrites, opportunists. Where were they since Gani has been sick? Did they bother? In June, I flew to London to go and greet him, not knowing that he just came into the country and few days after I was back in the country to see him. But these opportunists, who now describe Gani in glowing terms on the pages of newspaper, never cared how he fared during his last days. Bloody hypocrites. When we invited them for Gani Fawehinmi lectures, they didn’t show up, his book presentation, they never identified with. Now they want to weep more than the

bereaved for cheap political capital. That is the tragedy of Nigeria.

What was your last moment with him? Please, vividly capture it for us?

 I saw Gani last month, about three and a half weeks ago. He called me on phone saying he wanted to see me urgently. I said whether I could come immediately, he said no, that I should come by noon the next day because he was speaking to me from the hospital, but that he would be back at home same day. I was there with my wife the second day and was with him for about an hour. He kept thanking me for the book I did on him and I told him that he was embarrassing me. I told him he should not be thanking me because I was doing what I ought to do. He said “Richie, you don’t know what you have done. Nobody has written a book like this on me with all these information. You are a brave person”. After the visit, he and his wife saw us off to the gate of his house, but I asked him to go back. Instinctively, I gazed at him for a brief moment because I wasn’t sure what would happen to him next because he was quite frail, darker with all his hair white. If you didn’t

strain your ears, you may not hear what he was saying because the sickness has seriously affected his voice.

 What was his last moment on hospital bed like?

 He was taken to the hospital about a week before he died when his condition deteriorated. A day before he passed on, he had lost consciousness, he could not talk.

 Could you please trace the history of how he contacted the cancer that killed him?

 I guess he must have contracted the sickness from Gashua prison in 1989 when he was detained by the Babangida government because some substances were sprayed into his cell and he collapsed. I believe the cumulative effect of that substance must have led to this cancer since his doctors said his was a rare case of a non-smoker contracting lung cancer.