“Ebele Jonathan should realise that he is sitting on a keg of gunpowder which may explode anytime from now,” Ganiat Fawehinmi said during an interview in Lagos, southwest Nigeria.
Mrs. Fawehinmi had come to attend the launch of a book titled ‘Travesty Of Justice , the acquittal of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha and others over the murder of Kudirat Abiola.”
She described the acquittal and release of Al-Mustapha as shocking and a rape of justice and likened the lack of uproar over the controversial judgement as the silence of the graveyard.
“It is shocking and a rape of justice. With this kind of judgement, I don’t see any law.
“The silence we are experiencing is like the silence of the graveyard which is very dangerous and Ebele Jonathan should realise that he is sitting on a keg of gunpowder which may explode anytime from now.
“You can see what happened in Port Harcourt when a fellow House Assembly member got beaten with a mace and the mace got broken into two.
“That’s a bad signal and Ebele Jonathan should have a rethink,” she said.
Mrs Fawehinmi said Nigeria is at a standstill and everything seems to be falling apart.
“Right now nothing seems to be working. Education is not working and the country is in total darkness. But he keeps on dishing out billions.
“Unemployment is at the highest level now. Graduates are out of school but they can’t find jobs not because they don’t want to work but because there are not jobs,” she said.
She said had her husband been alive today, the chaos being experienced in the country would have sent him to court more than two hundred times.
“If Chief (Gani) were to be alive now, he would have gone to court more than 200 times. Look at Ibori’s matter. He was discharged of all the charges in Nigeria and jailed in London. Look at how the judiciary has ridiculed Nigeria,” she said.
She said the book is a good reminder that her husband has left foot soldiers behind.
“It’s a beautiful book. And I wish my husband was alive. He would have launched a copy of this book with N50,000 to show appreciation and show that he now has disciples, people who think the way I think,” she said.
The author of ‘Travesty of Justice’, Mr. Richard Akinnola, a journalist, a columnist and social critic said he decided to write the book so that victims of dictatorship will not be forgotten.
“I believe that any injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. And I believe that Kudirat Abiola and other victims of military dictatorship should not be forgotten just like that. It could have been me. I was abducted and I could have been killed,” Akinnola said.
He added: “If we allow this kind of injustice to go because of some political permutations, in the next few years, the same thing will happen again and we will not have any moral right to cry.”
Akinnola wondered why Al-Mustapha is being given a hero’s welcome when he reminds Nigerians of a bad past.
“Al-Mustapha has been on tour as if he was a rock star, as if he was the latest bride in town,” he said, adding that President Jonathan has remained silent on allegations that Al-Mustapha was released for the 2015 elections.
The book has 99 pages and contains mainly the excerpts of the verbatim interrogation of Al Mustapha, Mohammed Abacha and Lateef Sofolahan in 1999 on Kudirat’s murder and the attempted assassination of Alex Ibru and Abraham Adesanya.
It presents the history of the Kudirat case and why it took that long and reactions to the verdict.
Akinnola has written 15 books on Media, Human Rights and law. Two of his new books- Famous Murder Trials in Nigeria and Judicial Terrorism- the Trial of Major General Zamani Lekwot and Others on the Zango Kataf Crisis of 1992, would be out in October.
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