The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA President, Mr Yakubu Maikayau, SAN, OON has commended the Ikeja Branch for sustaining the Gani Fawehinmi Annual Lecture over the years.
He equally thanked the Ikeja Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association for honouring him for being the Host of the programme being held in honour of Gani Fawehinmi who he tagged as as “phenomenal lawyer”.
Read Full Speech Below;
I welcome you all to the 19th edition of the Gani Fawehinmi Annual Lecture. I thank the Ikeja Branch of the Nigerian Bar Association for according me the honour of being the Host of today’s programme being held in honour of a phenomenal lawyer – one of the great legal minds that ever emerged from the Commonwealth.
Before I proceed, permit me to commend the Ikeja Branch for sustaining these series of very important annual lectures over the years. The Branch has rightly earned its much deserved appellation as the Tiger Branch, and you all deserve a pat on the back for this laudable achievement. While Gani was privileged to have been alive to witness the first five editions of the Lectures, the last fourteen have been held in his memory and in his honour. This, itself, is telling. For a programme of this nature to have, not only to have outlived the person in honour of whom it is being held but, continued to wax stronger year in year out, is a testimonial to the exemplary life Gani lived.
If Gani were to be alive today, the legendary senior advocate would have been 85 years old. He would have, no doubt, continued to enrich our jurisprudence and encourage us to interrogate each and every policy of government for the purpose of getting the best for the Nigerian people. I am certain that if Gani was here with us today, he would have wholeheartedly endorsed the theme of this year’s lecture: Free, Fair and Credible Election as an Indispensable Tool for National Development, as it aptly encapsulates some of the values he spent most of his life fighting for.