Progressive political philosophy in the country may have predated the All Progressives Congress (APC) but not such progressive torch-bearers as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano, Tai Solarin, Lateef Jakande, Ambrose Alli, Tunji Braithwaite, etc. For President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who makes the list, his presidency will surely put some sheen on the progressive face of the Nigerian nation.
Of them all, late elder statesman Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, a distinguished lawyer who literally captivated the elite and youths as founding presidential candidate of Nigeria Advance Party (NAP) by his message, ’’kill the mosquitoes and coakroaches’’ and, ‘’ take your destiny in your hands’’ against systemic misrule was popular. He was a dogged fighter.
Today, aside the renewed hope offered by the new Nigerian leader, Tunji Braithwaites’ only son Barrister Olumide Braithwaite, who was spokesman of the now-dissolved Silas Agara-led Tinubu Shettima Grassroots Independent Campaign Council (TSGICC) took the progressive torch higher, tearing through popular TV and radio platforms and newspaper pages campaigned hard for Asiwaju while connecting the progressive moment between his late father’s message to Tinubu’s final arrival in Aso Villa.
The Braithwaites had also recently given traction to their late patriach’s progressive gospel by rolling out events from March 20-Monday 27 to mark the 90th birthday anniversary of their stallion nonagenarian matriarch, Dr. Mrs. Grace Olubanwo Simisola Braithwaite, a retired consultant paediatrician and past president of Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria (MWAN). From launching her memoirs, Grace to Conquer: Chronicles from the Crucible of a Matriach, they had a public lecture themed: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence by the Executive Secretary, Lagos State Sexual and Domestic Violence Agency, Titilayo Vivour-Adeniyi, anchored by MWAN’s delegation led by the Lagos State First Lady, Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu.
The events were capped with a thanksgiving service at St. Paul‘s Church Breadfruit,10 Davies Street and reception at The Glitter Hall, Yard 158 Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun Ikeja where turnout was huge. Former President Muhammadu Buhari who captured the essence in a letter to Olumide Braithwaite, described Mama as ’’a virtuous woman who has worked tirelessly with her late husband, the legendary advocate, to carve a path to life for many’’.
Mr. Olumide Braithwaite, managing partner at Tunji Braithwaite’s law firm where his three all-lawyers siblings are also senior attorneys, said his father always felt very sad seeing the nation seized by sleazy ruler-looters, noting that he encouraged his children to commit to fixing a new country completely rid of social vices he popularly called ‘’mosquitoes and coakroaches’’, where no university graduate should be jobless and no Nigerian retire to bed hungry.
This disclosure explains why the young Braithwaite openly endorsed Tinubu’s presidential ambition leading to his resounding election on February 25 and eventual inauguration on May 29 thereby fulfilling his late father’s lifelong push for a government that truly espouses progressive thinking.
It is safe therefore to draw parallels therefore between President Tinubu and Tunji Braithwaite as two of Nigeria’s outstanding 21st century iconic fighters for political rights, democracy and good governance. No doubt, their aspirations intersect meaning that it is possible, even plausible, to connect their respective progressive concepts.
Braithwaite desperately wanted a dynamic Nigeria that harnesses the human and natural resources of its people which he believed the former premier of the Western region in the First Republic, late Chief Awolowo, strove to achieve by introducing free and compulsory education for children of school-going age. By advocating nothing but good governance, he wanted a new corporate existence to emerge saying that Nigeria’s future was completely worn out, in rags and tatters.
But over the years, he dared the establishment openly expressing how he couldn’t withstand injustice as a young man, for example, during his handling of the legendary Afrobeat music maestro, Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s case when ‘unknown soldiers’ stormed Kalakuta Republic. Fela had regular brushes with successive military regimes fighting misrule with his music which made him a constant target of successive military juntas.
Braithwaite, often found in the sweet company of Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, former NBA president, late Chief Alao Aka-Bashorun and Mr. Femi Falana, SAN in defence of the oppressed, was one of the lawyers that represented late Awolowo in the infamous 1962/63 treasonable felony trial against him by the then Federal Government.
It is on record that when late maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha announced his 1996/1997 political transition programme, Tunji Braithwaite was the first person who challenged Abacha at the risk of his life. None of the leading politicians who formed the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) dared challenge Abacha. It was after he took on Abacha up to the Supreme Court that former Inspector General of Police, late M.D Yusuf, another courageous politician at that time, followed suit and declared.
Like Braithwaite, Tinubu’s near-death brushes with the military establishment as a NADECO chieftain emerged following the annulment of June 12, 1993 election of late Chief M.K.O Abiola by former military president Ibrahim Babangida. His travails increased when the late maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha sacked late Ernest Shonekan but he escaped abroad to coordinate diverse international pressure to force the military to accept the election results widely adjudged free and fair. He survived Abacha’s onslaught to tell his story 30 years after as Nigeria’s elected president after thoroughly scorched in the furnace of struggle.
When he returned to contest election in 1999 which he won on the platform of opposition Alliance for Democracy to become governor of Lagos State, his fighting spirit was again tested as another pseudo-democrat military dictator, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, pounced on his state, seized its allocations in a veiled bid to politically wrestle the state from him citing illegal creation of Development Areas as reason.
A skilful, embittered but bold Bola Tinubu ran to court, up to apex Supreme Court, pleading the case which he won thereby setting a jurisprudential precedent in how to deploy law to quash executive lawlessness. Like a heroic fighter, especially after ducking Obasanjo’s bullets and bludgeoning, he has held on, crossing bridges, side-stepping landmines, fighting off battles of so many sorts that it fits substituting Soyinka’s award-winning epic play, The Trials of Brother Jero with The Trials of Brother Bola.
That is the story of a man for whom battles of life, like the betrayals, media marking, unprintable name-calling, unending court cases, cabal conspiracy, institutional back-stabbing, sudden currency changes, electoral wars, etc have become buttons of lifting. Such is the stuff that true progressives are made. Struggle is their life. History has proved God’s immense grace on Tinubu showing how the hero has surmounted obstacles to arrive at Aso Rock.
Beyond politics, Braithwaite was a social crusader who was always in league with those advocating sanity and fairer deal for the populace.
He was in the quest for a saner and safer Nigeria governed by equity and fairness deploying his personal resources to found a political party, like Tinubu knowing that leading a party platform is the first major force to enthrone and enforce progressive change.
And what is a progressive, one may ask? My brief study revealed that the term, progressivism, ‘’holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization’’.
Put differently, progressive thinking means modern ideas about how things should be done, rather than employing traditional, conservative models. A progressive favours progress or reform, especially in political matters. It is a means of making policies and laws to drive programmes that give the most people opportunity regardless of their background or identity.
There has been a huge investment of public expectation in the new Bola Tinubu dispensation owing to what many describe as a reference point as former Lagos State governor where within his 8-year tenure he set up the machinery that has turned the fortunes of the state around.
There is also the angle which many observers like to cite as a positive factor based on President Bola Tinubu’s skillfulness in fighting off anti-progressive forces.
Though the APC has been in the saddle since 2015, there is a feeling in many progressive quarters that, with Bola Tinubu as a tried fighter, tested progressive, courageous social reformer and consummate democrat, Nigeria is poised to enter into a true progressive mode capable of unleashing the nation’s potentials for rapid growth and development. This is where the Nigerian people are right now.
With President Bola Tinubu now in the saddle, there is deserved rest for Dr. Tunji Braithwates’ssoul.
_*Emeka Nwankpa, member of Media and Publicity Directorate of dissolved Tinubu Shettima Grassroots Independent Campaign Council, wrote from Abuja*
