Posted by By YINKA FABOWALE on
There is yet no let-up in the verbal war between former Information Minister, Chief Alex Akinyele and radical lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, over the latter's letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo on the death of his (Obasanjo's) wife and the 117 people aboard the crashed Bellview airplane.
There is yet no let-up in the verbal war between former Information Minister, Chief Alex Akinyele and radical lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, over the latter's letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo on the death of his (Obasanjo's) wife and the 117 people aboard the crashed Bellview airplane.
Chief Akinyele had perceived the timing and contents of the letter as insensitive, criticising the notable lawyer for allegedly playing to the gallery. But in a swift reaction, Fawehinmi called Akinyele a political jobber and financial running dog of the establishment.
In a report published in the Sunday Sun edition of November 6, 2005, Akinyele fired back, accusing Fawehinmi of having "diarrhoea of the mouth."
He also attacked the person of the lawyer, who he claimed was a childhood friend, but had never seen anything good in successive governments.
Not one to abandon a fight midway, Chief Fawehinmi, in a 20-page reaction made available to Daily Sun, described Akinyele's outburst as full of "falsehood, inaccuracies, downright concoctions, sheer ignorance, trivialities and egocentric bombast."
Fawehinmi maintained that he did not see anything wrong with the timing of his letter to Obasanjo, noting that he wrote the letter three days after the burial of the President's wife and in view of its importance for the governance of the nation.
On Akinyele's claim that he (Fawehinmi) always criticised government, the lawyer retorted: "It is not in my character to praise government. My duty is to assess government programmes and policies in relation to the interests of the masses of our people. Surely, I respect some governments particularly at the regional level (not state level) which have advanced the educational opportunities of Nigerian people prior to 1966 and Nigerians, old and young knew or heard of them."