Of the columns that have appeared in this space every Tuesday this year, one in particular clings in my memory, but not on account of its impact, the controversy that trailed it, and the abuse and curses rained on me by readers who felt disappointed or displeased.
I remember it clearly because, of all the things I have written recently in this line of business, it came closest to giving me a scare,
A call had come from the office in Lagos asking whether my phone number should be released to Alhaji Femi Okunnu (SAN), who had asked to talk with me.
Now, it isn’t everyday a Senior Advocate of Nigeria wants to talk with you. I have more than a nodding acquaintance with a few of them, from long before they found fame and fortune. Okunnu was not one of them.
I had known him from a distance since 1964 when he was a dashing young lawyer who cruised about Lagos in a Volkswagen Beetle. His trademark goatee meshed with a luxuriant crop of hair parted on the left and his horn-rimmed glasses to project an engaged person marked for the leadership ranks of the Nigerian Left.
The last time I met him was in 1994. He had come to Rutam House to thank The Guardian for breaking the Osborne Foreshore scandal. In the time of military president Ibrahim Babangida, prime real estate reclaimed from sea at public expense was secretly parcelled out among the regime’s cronies and clients.
You knew that this was no ordinary development because, well before the plots were laid out, paved roads and arteries and drainage had been constructed on the site. Underground electricity cables had been laid and street lamps set in place, aglow with fluorescent lighting day and night. And this was at a time when even some of the finest residential neighbourhoods had to put up with epileptic power supply.
Naming names, The Guardian had demanded that the allotments be revoked. The Lagos State government and some powerful influences in Lagos pivoted on the paper’s reporting to challenge the acquisition of the site and the allotments at law. Okunnu, I believe, was their lead attorney.
They won in the court of first instance. Several days later, Okunnu was in Rutam House, at the head of a delegation, to thank The Guardian. But this was a time of utter lawlessness in Nigeria, when the regime routinely ousted the jurisdiction of the courts and even rendered the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights nugatory.
The authorities simply consecrated the theft under another subterfuge.
That was 1994. But here we are, some 21 years later, and at my base in central Illinois, I get a message that Okunnu would like to talk with me.
Before responding I did some quick thinking. I pulled up my recent submissions and went through them. Nothing I had written could have moved anyone to retain a senior attorney to seek compensation for injuries. My breathing regained its rhythm.
But it was a Tuesday. Could it be that my column for that day was the problem?
Titled “An unwelcome visitor,” it was about Tony Blair, also known as “Phony Tony,” the former British prime minister who confected a dossier that helped build a case for the American-led invasion and destruction of Iraqi in which Blair had, in the face of strong opposition from his fellow Labour parliamentarians and public opinion, led Britain to prosecute enthusiastically as the major ally of the United States..
I had written that, in a just world, Blair would be standing trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, not gallivanting all over the globe as a money-grubbing lobbyist, and certainly not featuring as keynote speaker in the workshop that the APC had organised on the eve of taking office to identify its priorities and firm up its agenda.
Strong words, I grant. Had Tony Blair by any chance briefed Okunnu to institute a defamation lawsuit against me on account of those words? If that was the case, I had every reason to breathe easier still.
If it came to that, I would plead justification – that the publication was essentially truthful
If that seemed risky, I would urge my attorneys to press the court to adopt the ruling in the case ofNew York Times v Sullivan, which makes it all but impossible for any public official or public figure to recover for injury to reputation unless such persons can prove that the publication was made with “actual malice,” meaning that its author or publisher not only knew that the material was false, but had gone on to publish it with reckless disregard to its falsity.
Very few plaintiffs ever win under this standard, not even if the publication contained some material errors.
Satisfied that I was in no danger of being shafted by a multi-million Naira lawsuit by the hubristic Tony Blair, I called Okunnu.
“Tunji,” he said with avuncular familiarity. “How are you?”
“I am fine, sir,” I responded.
“I have seen your article in The Nation,” he said.
For the next 30 seconds or so – it had seemed like an eternity – he said nothing.
I began to get that sinking feeling. Could it be that he was telegraphing that this was not going to be a friendly encounter?
“I have seen your article,” he resumed. “But I have not read it.”
There was cause for relief there. If he had not read the article, he could not have concluded that only a multi-million Naira defamation lawsuit could even begin to repair the damage it might have inflicted on his client
Okunnu told me how he had called Lai Mohammed, the publicity secretary (as he then was) of the APC and asked what in the world could have led them to bring in Tony Blair, of all persons, to feature as a keynote speaker at the party’s transition workshop. Lai Mohammed had then told him that I had made essentially the same point in my column. He had then decided to save it for later reading, but not before talking with me.
He went on to give me a run-down of all the acts and omissions that transformed Blair from one of the most admired figures in British and international politics to one of the most despised. He brought up the latest developments at the Chilcot Commission looking into Britain’s role in the Iraq war
My column had captured much of what he said, and I told him that if he had not read it, he needed not do so since it contained nothing he did not know. He was enormously well informed.
The discussion ended on a far more amiable note than I had expected. I promised to call on him during my next visit to Lagos.
Tony Blair, I should add, did not show up the following day at the event he was supposed to headline. He had slunk away in the night, and his place was taken by Peter Mandelson, who had held senior cabinet positions under Blair. A devoted follower of this column told me months later that, after reading the Blair piece, he had wagered that Blair would not show up. He won the wager.
As I reviewed the day’s encounter my mind went back to the Femi Okunnu of the 1960s and his friend and Hull University contemporary Tayo Akpata and their left-wing activism, and to their sudden lurch to the Right during the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon.
How did the Left lose the twain, and their collaborators in The Committee of Ten?
NATION
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