Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, writes on life and times of the late statesman, Tunji Braithwaite.
The name, Tunji Braithwaite, founder Nigerian Advance Party (NAP), pro-democracy activist, lawyer and author, who passed on April 4, 2016 at the age of 82, resonated last Tuesday, at a colloquium in Lagos. The audience comprised more of activists, lawyers, as well as politicians, particularly those that shared his political ideology.
Among personalities present were: former presidential candidate, Prof. Pat Utomi; Debe Odumegwu Ojukwu (son of the late Biafra warlord, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu); Sam Omatseye who represented national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu; Director of Akintoye Branco-Rhodes, Dr. Richard Umaru; Executive Chairman, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL), Debo Adeniran; President Women Arise, Joe Okei-Odumakin; Comrade Malachy Ugwumadu of Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR); university teacher, Dr. Odion Akhaine; Comrade Abiodun Aremu, among others.
Although the occasion billed to start at 11am was two hours behind schedule, the intellectual discourse was quite deep and revealing.
Setting the agenda for the gathering, the coordinator of the colloquium, Prince Ajibola Oluyede, stated that the late elder statesman left indelible footprints in different spheres of human endeavour, especially politics, religion and law to the extent that the history of the country cannot be complete without according him a prominent mention.
Iloh recalled that he knew Braithwaite before he met him due to his reputation on abhorrence of corruption and disdain to the corrupt. He described the deceased as an ambassador for Christ whose good fruits were glaring and easily identified.
He said legends like Braithwaite do not die but live on because they have left so much priceless things to be remembered for. “Our brother was easily known by his fruit. He treated corruption and the corrupt with disdain and could not intentionally seek identity with any of these nor applaud their doings.”
Ojukwu stated that Braithwaite was not only a great lawyer, but a de-tribalised Nigerian and one of those that never compromised justice in any form.
He said the relationship between his father and Braithwaite was so cordial that the late Ojukwu reposed so much trust and confidence in him despite coming from a different ethnic group.
Debe Ojukwu, who also is a legal practitioner, said, as his father’s lawyer, Braithwaite never betrayed the late Igbo leader.
“My father had three identifiable Yoruba friends that look physically identical. The first is Engr. Fashola, an uncle to former Governor Babatunde Fashola; Prof. Wole Soyinka and Braithwaite. For my father to have Braithwaite as his lawyer shows he was one you could trust and he never betrayed my father. He was indeed a man of great ideas. Icons like him don’t die,” he said.
Utomi described Braithwaite as an extra-ordinary man, adding that history would give him his due.
The economist said the deceased was a man of great visionary disposition, full of political sagacity, stressing that his challenge to the political order was perceived as revolutionary.
But Braithwaite’s revolutionary ideas, Utomi said, are what a nation as Nigeria needs to develop, arguing that a society that does not take everybody up does not stand up for too long.
“It is for the greater good that no one is left behind,” Utomi noted, an idea that Braithwaite also held dearly and championed.
According to Utomi, “there are three domains that we must struggle to elevate his legacy. We must ensure that on transparency and accountability, we keep the faith and hope alive. The civil society must always hold authority or those in leadership accountable. We must always question the conduct of those in power. But sadly enough, the civil society has not been living up to this challenge.
“Second, his other legacy is the elevation of the public space because until we can have rational discourse, modernity will continue to elude us. The third issue is developmental state. But as it stands, the Nigeria state and its character are being described as shambolic. That is dangerous for us.”
Tinubu said the history of the nation could not be written without according Braithwaite a pride of place.
He said the late lawyer represented robust principled temperament of the left.
In the late 1970s, Braithwaite had prophesied that until a revolution that will rid Nigeria’s socio-political and economic system of cockroaches and rats happens, real change will remain in fleeting illusion.
For Odion, Braithwaite was a reformist and was always concerned with harnessing the human and national resources. He added that there was the need to have a clear-cut ideology which he said was lacking in the nation’s politics but which the late Braithwaite struggled to institute.
Odion said although some people say the late statesman was a leftist, he was not, given that his approach to certain issues gave him out as a controversial realist.
All the speakers eulogised the exploits of late statesman in such terms as “activist”, “reformist”, “revolutionary”, “trail-blazer”, “dogged-fighter”, “realist”.
Their summation was that revolutionaries like Braithwaite can never die.
Born in 1933, Braithwaite was the youngest of eight children. He was educated at CMS Grammar School, entering the school’s preparatory section in 1946 and completing his education seven years later.
In 1955, he sat for his A-Levels at the London University at Kennington College, and enrolled in 1957/58 as a Law student at the Council of Legal Education in London.
He was called to the Bar in 1961 at Lincoln’s Inn and thereafter signed the Rolls of Barristers at the High Court of Justice, London, before returning to Nigeria.
One of his most celebrated cases was in 1977, when Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti instructed him to represent the Kuti family and get Beko and Fela out of detention, as well as seek redress over some rights abuse by the Olusegun Obasanjo-led military junta.
Braithwaite fought the case through the High Court to the Supreme Court, leading other notable lawyers, including Olu Onagoruwa and Alao Aka-Bashorun, among others.