LAGOS PANEL REPORT, PUBLIC INTEREST LAWYERING AND THE LEGACY OF SIR ALEXANDER NYOR GAADI 1949 – 2011

The reactions that continue to trail last week’s submission to Governor Sanwoolu of the Report of the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters, has once again brought to the fore the role which the judicial process, the rule of law and public interest lawyering play in the process of development and societal advancement.

Earlier in the year, the disputation that has arisen between the Rivers and Lagos State governments and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) regarding who has authority for collection of Value Added Tax (VAT) had drawn public attention to how the cold letters of law could be activated in a manner that has ripple effect, often with beneficial outcomes, on society.

I take liberty today, to pay glowing tribute to the Late Alexander Nyor Gaadi who is, unarguably, one of the few individuals of Tiv extraction who has made significant contribution, not just to the development of law, but also for contributing to the notion that law is indeed an instrument for social engineering.

The name Gaadi is not strange to any Makurdi city dweller of the late 70s and early 80s. Any kid who, like me, grew up in Makurdi in the early 80s, is bound to be familiar with this name.

For me as a person it had very little to do with the man Gaadi, or his family, it had more to do with that obscure, largely undeveloped and understandably uninhabited part of Makurdi, along Gbooko road, stretching from what is today Terwase Agbadu and extending right to the brink of what is today Tactical Air Command of the Nigeria Airforce, known for short as Airforce Base. We all referred to that part of town as Gaadi, or didn’t we! Unknown to us then, of course as kids, there is indeed a face behind this name after all.

Sir Alexander Nyor Gaadi was born in Mkar, Gbooko Local Government to the Late Chief Gaadi Amogo the 8th Clan Head of Mbayongo in Vandeikya Local Government Area of Benue State. At a very tender age Gaadi Amogo relocated from Mbayongo to Mkar in order to offer support services to the early Dutch missionaries that were operative in Mkar at the time.

This is the time when he had Alex. It was from Mkar that he’d later further relocate to Makurdi by which time Alex had become a big boy. With the outbreak of the civil war in the early 70s the young Alex was drafted into the Nigeria Army Intelligence Corps and rose to the rank of Captain before taking up an honororay discharge.

Military service may have been over but for the young and, I daresay, energetic and visionary Alex, the spirit of commitment to community service was only just beginning to emerge in the young Alex and, like the man who saw tomorrow, he immersed his creative energy towards agriculture and especially capacity development in the area of agribusiness.

He quickly set up Gaadi and Sons Farm Project which played a pioneering role in mechanized farming not just in Benue but even beyond, extending to almost all of what is today known as the north central region of Nigeria. He cultivated cash crops and delved into animal husbandry in commercial quantity.

There is no gainsaying the fact that this had an obvious knock-on effect on the local economy not only in terms of boosting commerce and trade but also in the area of job creation. It is to the credit of Alex Gaadi and an eloquent testimony to his vision that at a time when enterprises such as this were not too common he had the forward looking presence of mind to move in the direction of such uncharted territory.

Today, we speak about Benue as “The Food Basket of the Nation”, and about agriculture and specifically agribusiness as the direction in which to look, but almost forty years back Alexander Gaadi was already pointing us in this direction.

Quite apart from agriculture Gaadi will perhaps be remembered, more than anything else, for his pioneering role, and the great contributions which he made to the development of education in Benue State.

Not only did he provide scholarship opportunities for most of his students he was such a stickler for educational excellence that he would go as far as India, Philippines and United States of America, just to mention but a few, to recruit the requisite human resources for his schools. It is indeed with a deep sense of gratitude, and satisfaction too, that we acknowledge the eloquent testimonies that continue to trail the memory of Alexander Gaadi from numerous beneficiaries of his generosity who are scattered around the globe.

Health is life, and Alexander Gaadi knew this rather too well. Accordingly, the visionary, versatile, shrewd and rather astute Gaadi utilized the area of medical services provisioning as yet another opportunity for service d3livery. He opened up Gaadi Clinics especially in rural, under served and marginalized communities to enable the impoverished locals to access health care services at almost no costs whatsoever.

The contribution of Alexander Gaadi in this regard is better appreciated if one notes that even now; it is difficult to have doctors residing in rural communities in Nigeria, but even back then he was able to remunerate doctors sufficiently to enable them reside and manage hospitals in rural communities.

I think it is fair to conclude that Gaadi was a trail blazer of some sorts and a man who was way ahead of this time and his contemporaries.

At a time in the early 90s when currency exchange business was not only relatively unknown, and with extremely limited chances of successes, Alexander Gaadi not only applied for but also successfully acquired a Bureau de Change licence with which he operated lucratively in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Port-Harcourt, and Owerri.

To my knowledge he remains one of very few Tiv people who have been successful in this line of business.

But, the line of business that remains a milestone is the incorporation of Gaadi Airlines a very audacious and very revolutionary business venture one might say, and one that remains rather unprecedented in the north-central region of Nigeria. In paying glowing tribute to Alex Gaadi we also salute the courage and fortitude of his Son Captain Sam Gaadi who is keeping this family legacy alive.

For us in the legal community one thing for which we will forever be mindful of the contributions of Sir Alex Gaadi is his doggedness, his courage and his uncompromising and unflinching commitment to the cause of victims of the 2001 military massacre of Zaki-Biam which resulted, not just to the death of many members of that community but also caused incalculable damage to property and to the environment.

It is to credit of Sir Gaadi that today a whooping 8Billion Naira judgment debt in favour of the aforementioned victims hangs like a sword of domocles on the Federal Government of Nigeria.

It is only a matter of time and this judgment debt will be liquidated. We celebrate Sir Gaadi for this milestone and we pay glowing tribute to him in the belief that, by so doing, young people especially, but also those who have the resources and the requisite community spirit, will be inspired to take up the challenge of public interest lawyering as a pathway towards societal advancement.

Rest in Peace Sir Alexander Nyor Gaadi.

Utsaha, a lawyer and 2004 Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) Human Rights Fellow at the Central European University (CEU) Budapest, Hungary, is the Executive Secretary Resource and Planning Commission Catholic Diocese of Makurdi, north -central Nigeria.