K’omolu yan fanda — by Tunde Akanni

Freeborn must enjoy freedom of movement is the closest English equivalent I can muster for the headline here. And I’m savouring that so salaciously. In Abuja for that matter. Abuja, the former haven of Abacha’s killer Strike Force. Here, I now function as an agent of a state actor, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), promoting and enforcing socio-economic rights.

My familiar turf, not minding the perils, was advocating fundamental human rights as the spokesperson for the nation’s premier civil rights body, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO). What a dramatic twist from being on the government watchlist of a government to working for government, striding the full gamut of rights advocacy?

To the glory of the Almighty Allah, the scintillatingly inviting character of Lagos and the Southwest in terms of infrastructural escalation as well as radical posturing are now being democratised. All fully fired by the popular concern for Bashorun MKO Abiola, most reputed for his victory at the polls on June 12, 1993, 33 years back.

You would only be surprised by my excitement if you share the same age bracket with the children in my house or are younger. These children always marvel that I find it difficult to stop celebrating MKO Abiola, winner of the June 12 presidential election, anytime I have cause to discuss him. MKO! He was the lone star of his generation.

I was a reporter on the Features Desk of National Concord and doubled as a member of the MKO Abiola Zakat Committee. As a Concord reporter, I belonged in the elite cadre of pressmen in Nigeria. Never a sweat-soaked shirt on any Concord journo. My desk had an air-conditioned Volkswagen Jetta Executive Sedan attached to it with a driver, Mr. Remi, whose brotherly compassion for me derived largely from being an Ile-Ife man. I reciprocated his love too, always declining my editor’s subtle enlistment of my approval for her suspicion of any misconduct by Mr. Remi. Most times outside the vicinity of the Features Desk, Mr. Remi would hail me, “Aburo mi o se o.” Mrs. Ewaen Osareren, my editor, motherly to me till date, never knew the bond between Mr. Remi and me.

No shakara could demean any Concord journo. On one occasion, a colleague, Ada Ibekie, a business correspondent, had requested that I hold forth for her at a particularly creamy press conference organised by ARCO Petrochemical Company at its Victoria Island office. Dem never born Atlantic City!

It was during Ramadan. Over with the session, I picked my folder and made for the door. We, Concord journos, carried ourselves so high. A colleague from another media organisation wondered if I wasn’t going to wait for the PR consultant to do further briefing familiar to all cultivated journalists.

“My driver is waiting for me,” I announced proudly.

“Oh really?”

The following Monday, Nduka, the PR consultant, hurried down to Concord. I had a copy to turn in and so was neck-deep in crafting it when Nduka sauntered into my office. He pleaded to excuse me out, noticing the seriousness on my face.

“Seriously, I wanted to catch up with you after the press conference, but I learnt you had driven off.”

The chauffeur-driven car was a big deal even to the big man, the consultant. Our encounter was a smart, brief one, but the relationship endured, accounting even for the freshness with which I recall the story here.

Being a member of the Abiola Zakat Committee earned me so much personal fulfilment and abundant respect within Concord. It earned me even much more outside, especially in the Southeastern states’ Muslim communities where I shared out the zakat of the inimitable philanthropist and winner of the historic June 12, 1993 presidential election, rated as the freest and fairest in the nation’s political history.

The Abiola Zakat Committee provided me with the enablement to do annual tours of Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Cross River, Rivers and Imo states. Having done my National Youth Service in Imo State in 1986/87, it was always some kind of homecoming visiting Owerri.

Sharing zakat for Abiola was a most honourable and abundantly rewarding role I combined with being a Concord staff member. We must fly if any road trip extended beyond four hours. If we had cause to pass the night anywhere, our hotel had to be the best in town. I remember Sam Omatseye once jokingly remarking that Concord doesn’t send out staff to go and start doing mindless wandering like a sex worker. Trust witty Sam.

Even in its beleaguered state, Concord was the enabler for me to veer into rights advocacy. Press invitees to any major event were never complete without Concord. I was the reporter mandated to cover a major conference on Police and Human Rights organised by CLO at Badagry. A week later, after my report was published, Concord fell under the jackboot. It was proscribed.

I was a spectacular victim of the proscription. Didi Adodo and Olaitan Oyerinde, both late now, then of the Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ISSAN), had given me an advert to give voice to their union’s support for Abiola’s mandate. Typical union steely language prevailed in the text. Concord’s advert department insisted I should get them to expunge some strong expressions in addition to signing an indemnity form. They acceded to the company’s request, but we were all rather too late. Soldiers had swarmed everywhere around Concord within the two hours of shuttling between Concord and the Dopemu office of ISSAN. No entry to anyone any longer. Unfortunately, the cash for the advert was in the drawer of my table in the office. Thankfully, Didi and Olaitan reasoned with me.

My romance with the unions and CLO recommended me as a trusted comrade who could be recruited into the struggle, especially with the prior strong personal introduction and integration dexterously done by my childhood friend and colleague all the way, Ismail Ibraheem, now a professor at the University of Lagos.

Thus began my sojourn in full-time human rights advocacy. Together with the rest of my colleagues, I was under a ceaseless threat of harassment, arrest and detention by security operatives. At some point, I spent a week in detention at the notorious Panti Police Station where, for the first time in my life, I tasted what has come to be popularly known as yamarita.

Even as a Visiting Scholar to Columbia University in 1998, there was no lowering of the flag of struggle. I was part of the New York ceremony of renaming Nigeria Corner as Kudirat Abiola Corner, graced by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, by the grace of God the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria today. He was a most wanted activist back home then. Leveraging the visibility of Columbia University as an Ivy League institution, I addressed sessions on the state of the Nigerian press within the context of the tyranny of military rule. I shared sessions with others, including Babafemi Ojudu, at different times.

Thirty-three years later, the most merciful Allah, who took us through the thickets of pro-democracy struggle, has enthroned us with the mandate to enlarge the coast of freedom for Nigerian citizens. From being anxious for such petty rights as free speech, we have come a long way to driving the actualisation of socio-economic rights backed by law.

Beyond the trenches, we have since taken time to improve ourselves and relentlessly strive for power forcibly wrested from the people by roguish soldiers who doubled as blackmailers, consigning human rights and pro-democracy activists into the bins of history.

Clearly ahead of all other government agencies and commissions, FCCPC, where yours sincerely has berthed for sabbatical, offers not only the strongest visibility to socio-economic rights in the country but also their enforcement, taking full advantage of the relevant statutory provisions in the laws of the land. I survived the persecution of the days of human rights advocacy to be part of the advocacy and enforcement of socio-economic rights.

Nigeria go better!

Tunde Akanni, PhD, former CLO spokesperson and LASU’s first Professor of Journalism and Development Communication, is currently on sabbatical leave at FCCPC, Abuja.