By Shola Oshunkeye
President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, opened a floodgate of encomiums for Lagos lawyer and human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, as he joined the senior citizens’ club, turning 60.
In a statement issued by the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, Buhari said he joined family members, friends and professional colleagues of the legal luminary in celebrating “the milestone, which has been marked with honours and awards for forthrightness and advocacy for the good of every Nigerian.”
Commending Falana for what he described as the lawyer’s sense of patriotism over the years, President Buhari praised the Ekiti-born Senior Advocate for his advisory roles to leaders, institutions and governments, especially on the value of good governance.
“As the legal luminary turns 60, the President believes his antecedents have been most exemplary and commendable in advocating for a better life for the poor and underprivileged,” Adesina said in the release. .
“President Buhari prays that the almighty God will grant the human rights lawyer longer life, good health and more wisdom to keep serving the country.”
Paying tribute to Falana at 60, the Rev. Dr. Wilson Badejo, a former General Overseer of the Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria, where Mrs. Funmi Falana is a Pastor, described Falana as “a shining star in Nigeria’s legal and human rights firmaments. He has served, and still serving, his Fatherland with the whole of his earth. He renders service to humanity as on to God. That is why every well-meaning Nigerian should not only congratulate him at the attainment of 60 but celebrate the milestone with him. I wish him many more years of fruitful service to Nigeria, Africa and humanity as a whole.
Born on May 20, 1958, at Ilawe-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Falana has spent much of his 60 years on earth on vigorous human rights advocacy and vehement campaign for responsible and accountable governance in Nigeria. He has also been a thorn in the flesh of rogue officials who brought the country to its knees through their profligacy and mindless looting of the treasury.
A kindred spirit with the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Falana also played prominent roles in the battle to dismantle tyranny and military dictatorship in Nigeria prior to the advent of democracy in 1999. Together with Fawehinmi and other pro-democracy activists, he participated actively in the struggle for the revalidation of the June 12, 1993 presidential vote that was won squarely by the late Basorun M.K.O. Abiola but which his friend and then Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled without giving any convincing reason for the unpatriotic act.
The annulment threw the country into chaos, driving it towards the precipice until both General Sani Abacha, Babangida’s successor, and Abiola died under mysterious circumstances on June 8, and July 7, 1998 respectively.
Though many activists were either assassinated or chased into exile by the brutal Abacha dictatorship, Gani Fawehinmi, Falana and many other patriots stayed the course, defying the tyrant and his goons. Finally, light prevailed over the forces of darkness and the nation was ushered into democracy on May 29, 1999, with the inauguration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as President.
Falana, who is happily married to Funmi, a lawyer, human rights activist and pastor, had his primary education at St. Michael’s Primary School, Ilawe, between 1963 and 1968. For his secondary education, Falana, father of Falz, a popular Nigerian rapper, singer, online comedian and actor, attended the Sacred Heart Catholic Seminary between 1971 and 1975. He was admitted into then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1977, where he studied law. He graduated in 1981 and was called to the bar the following year.
Femi Falana began his own Chambers, Falana and Falana Chambers, in 1991, with his wife, Funmi as a partner.
