Tribute: Williams’ death, act of God’s judgment
By Lanre Banjo
I am writing from the United States of America to express my heartfelt condolence to the family of one of the most brilliant legal icons in Nigeria, Chief Frederick Alade Rotimi Williams, SAN.
For a few of us who genuinely love Nigeria, we decode the death of many black people from the point of views of the higher forces. The majority always have the feelings that it is a taboo for one to die where his belongings are absent.
Gnassigbe Eyadema of Togo ruled his country for over 30 years without building a good hospital with state-of-the-art equipment. He was flown abroad at an age of over sixty, and never made it back to his country alive. Minister Haruna Elewi did not see the need to join the call to do for ordinary Nigerians what he and his children could enjoy after leaving office. He thought he was rich, and Europeans have established hospitals for him and other Nigerians to seek medical care. He jumped in the plane to go and cure ordinary malaria with his in-law and son who were both reported to be doctors; he died in the plane before arriving his destination. God sent a strong message to all of us with his death. If you do for the poor masses, one day you shall reap from it. Oyi of Oyi, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo rather bought furniture with public funds instead of ambulance, when he needed the ambulance most, the furniture could not take him to the hospital. He died on his wife’s lap. General Abdul Kareem Adisa was once in charge of Nigerian federal roads. When he became the minister of housing and works, the houses that Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande built for the poor for N250,000, Adisa said he did not know how Alhaji Jakande could do it. He increased the price to N1million. Those who made the deposit never got their deposit back. He ignored the roads while accumulating wealth for himself. While Babangida wasted our talents in the medical field, amassed wealth and refused to build good hospitals for the masses as religious as the hypocrite claimed to be, Adisa was singing IBB for president in 2007. God the omnipotent and silent judge did not prevent his accident on the same road he ignored, thinking that he was immune. Babangida did not build suitable hospitals for all because they all felt London hospitals are there for the connected Nigerians. He was flown to London and he never made it back from a London hospital that they all boasted of. Chief Bola Ige, under whose attorney generalship, many Nigerians were killed without the arrest of the killers, and with many murder cases unsolved, was brutally killed under the leadership of the evil he knew. All and sundry would remember that Chief Ige preferred to work with the evil he knew, rather than the angels in the Alliance for Democracy and Afenifere that he did not know. The evil attended his funeral, shed crocodile tears and till today, his brutal murder is unresolved. We should also remember that in the last letter that Chief Ige wrote to Obasanjo, the evil he knew, he praised him for taking good care of his wife, Mama Atinuke Ige and his brother, Dele Ige, caring less of the brutishness and inhumanity of Obasanjo to the rest of us. The list goes on and on. All these people served for selfish purpose and not for our national interest and definitely not in the interest of the oppressed masses.
I must clearly state that the reference made above is not to reproach them in death, but to sound a warning to the living who are in a position to take care of the poor, but instead think they are immune from the challenges facing the poor.
The late Chief Williams lamented before he was flown to London for medical treatment that he had wished that if our wasted and “brilliant medical personnel are given the necessary equipment and a conducive atmosphere, they could definitely perform wonders.” In sickness, he still remembered the ignored talents and oppressed masses of Nigeria. When I was told by a friend who visited him in his hospital bed in London that he was recovering, I said to myself, this would be a test for God. Unlike many who had flown to London and never made it back to where their belongings were, Chief Williams flew back to Nigeria and died where his belongings were.
A legal luminary, whose knowledge of law was as gigantic and intimidating as he looked, Chief Williams was an embodiment of what an Attorney General should be. He did well in that regard in the old Western Region. As a Nigerian of Egba stock, he never believed in unpatriotic saying that “Egba meji ki njera won niyan” (two Egbas don’t engage in an argument) which provided the leverage for Obasanjo to head butt and rig Chief Olusegun Osoba out of power. Chief Williams as an Egba man challenged the anarchist, Balogun of Owu, on the platform of The Patriots till he breathed his last. Not minding that Baba Iyabo is an Egba man, he galvanised the members of The Patriots into action to challenge him in many respects and on behalf of the masses. His credo was “work hard with the presentation of details on the side of the truth.” His legal savoir-faire assisted his beam of light to penetrate the darkness of the enemy of Nigeria and made him the apotheosis of a legal idol.
To the hypocrites from Ogun State, who are garbed in the toga of president and governor, when Timi the Law was alive, you were not guided by his example. Your prayer therefore has fallen in the deaf ear of the Lord, because it is the prayer of an insincere shepherds in-charge. To Gbenga Daniel and others, the only way to honour a man like Chief Williams is to allow free conduct of elections without sending thugs to harass opposition.
•Banjo was the governorship candidate of the National Conscience Party in Ogun State in 2003
