By Jide Akintunde
Mr Femi Falana, SAN and Dr Kingsley Moghalu ,ex-D/Gov Central Bank and Presidential candidate of Young Progressive Party, YPP, in the 2019 election. He recently resigned from the party.
It was a strange video clip from a public function. In it, the popular lawyer, Femi Falana, SAN, was frantic about making a point. Someone, who has been identified as the moderator of the event, could be heard off camera trying to get Falana to reconsider what he was saying. But he didn’t.
Falana was protesting the public recognition of the presence of Professor Kingsley Moghalu at the Felabration 2019 event, in Lagos. “Is Dr. Moghalu still around? I think it is unfair to single out Dr. Moghalu for recognition. We should not celebrate opportunism. Here is a politician who contested on the platform of a party, who has moved conveniently to the APC. They have given him an appointment and he has just discarded his own political party. I don’t think that is fair for all,” Falana declared.
To begin with, this is simply indecorous. Organisers of events reserve the right to publicly acknowledge the presence of dignitaries they wish to recognise. Disagreement with the recognition of any guest by another guest should not be as obtrusive as Falana made his.
Perhaps unknown to Falana, Moghalu was well placed for recognition at the yearly event that celebrates the late music icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Fela’s mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a notable Nigerian in her own right, was Moghalu’s godmother who gave him his Yoruba name, Ayodele, as an infant.
Falana’s protestation of the recognition of Moghalu was even more inappropriate. The only shred of truth in his accusation seemed, merely, to provide the basis for his blistering attack.
It is true that Moghalu has formally resigned his membership of the Young Progressives Party (YPP). In his letter appropriately addressed to the party chairman on October 10, four days before the Felabration event, Moghalu provided his reason for resigning from the party: he has convened a non-partisan citizens movement, called To Build A Nation (TBAN), as a platform for advocating political and electoral reform, as well as for providing civic and voter education for Nigerians.
In Moghalu’s personal estimation, these commitments — which include advocacy for constitutional restructuring of Nigeria and introduction of electronic voting — assume more importance than partisan politics, if Nigeria is to truly move forward in the next electoral cycle.
But although Moghalu was the candidate of YPP in the 2019 presidential election, the party would not say it “sponsored” his candidacy, as Falana claimed. But for the few individuals who gave substantial donations to his campaign, and a larger number of Nigerians who put in their widows’ mite, Moghalu sponsored his campaign with his life savings.
Falana was more reckless in his attack, which was founded on mistaken identity. The new APC appointee in question was George Moghalu, who is not even a relation of Kingsley Moghalu. By no means was George Moghalu a new APC member. Until his recent appointment as the Managing Director of National Inland Waterways Authority, he had been the National Auditor of the APC since 2014.
If Falana cared about the universal value of respect for others and holding the truth as sacred, he could have apologised for his erroneous attack against Kingsley Moghalu at the event, given that the moderator was trying to correct him and many people in the audience knew he had mistaken Kingsley Moghalu for George Moghalu.
Two days later, Falana issued his “mea culpa” after Moghalu had demanded a public apology from him in his social media post that stated the facts. Falana wrote that Moghalu confirmed that he had left YPP, but that he neither joined the APC nor got appointment from the federal government. And he declared, seemingly magisterially, “I believe him in toto.”
Falana went on to say that he didn’t set out to embarrass Moghalu and deeply regretted any embarrassment caused by the incorrect aspect of his statement.
Not only is Falana’s mea culpa short of a clear apology, he chose unobjective determination of the truth. He cynically established verifiable facts on his belief in Moghalu’s words, thereby shifting the burden of proof. For a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, he should know that the burden of proof rests with the accuser and not the accused.
Was it that Falana did not know the right thing to do or he was too arrogant to care about doing it?
\Part of the misfortune of the Nigerian youth of today is that those who are supposed to be role models are not showing the right example. We have become a society where wrongdoings don’t compel apologies to people affected by our misdeeds or even clear false accusations.
Falana of all people is perhaps the least qualified to accuse anyone in the Nigerian public space of opportunism. It is hardly possible to adulate him anymore, except for the nostalgia of his public-spirited activism of old. For years now, he has oscillated, conveniently fraternising with Nigeria’s oppressive elite when not equivocating on grave public matters as part of the assertion of his legal luminary.
Kingsley Moghalu, or anyone, does not deserve the indignity of Falana’s baseless public attack. Falana still owes Moghalu a public apology. His non-apology apology has so far compounded the worry about how someone of his standing would be so mistaken in attacking another public figure.
Jide Akintunde was the spokesperson for Kingsley Moghalu 2019 presidential campaign.
