By Niyi Ibietan
My friend, comrade, brother and personal lawyer, Kunle Rasheed Adegoke (KRAD), is now a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). In truth and indeed, he’s so worthy of the title and that explains why I received the news of his elevation to the Silk with great joy and exceeding gratitude to God Who made this height possible.
I must confess this is one instance in which I struggled about the perspective to anchor my narrative because the history I share with KRAD is quite vast, and those familiar with our history can relate with the story with a great sense of recollection. As with most people and relationships, the intersection of our existential journeys was a circumstantial epiphenomenon.
Like me, Kunle Radical (KRAD) as we call him, ‘suffered’ greatly, perhaps irredeemably, as a student leader in those great days of student unionism. I refer to the days when the Nigerian student movement was led by those sufficiently armed with the tools of dialectics – a grounding in theoretical and empirical Marxism and social democracy.
KRAD and I would find ourselves in one of the four hitherto existing radical tendencies of NANS of the 80s and 90s. We shared great moments of debate about dialectical transformation of Nigeria.
Quite memorable was the period before his second expulsion and while I was on ‘asylum’ in Unilag after my release from detention during the Abacha years, we (three of us) would lock ourselves up in a room to produce an organisational newspaper during a weekend, and by the end of the coming week ensured copies got to considerable number of campuses, North, South, East and West. The newspapers and bulletins were constitutive of the literatures we used to educate ourselves and other comrades in those days. In those days, without reading you are practically dead.
And KRAD’s Unilag years were quite challenging. Easily, I can recall when he and some other comrades were ‘thrown out” of Unilag for their commitment to the defence of students rights. I felt honoured that day in 1994 listening to his lawyer, Nurudeen Ogbara, used the ratio of my case (Niyi Ibietan & 44 Ors Vs. University of Abuja and Ors) to buttress his submission to the judge to request a legal reversal of the expulsion of KRAD and others. And the little drama after the hearing sessions at the Federal High Court Ikoyi, when KRAD introduced me to his lawyer: “Barrister, this is Niyi Ibietan”. And Mr. Ogbara asked: “You mean same Niyi Ibietan!”. I used to be a little tiny boy, I reckoned the lawyer must have been surprised by the disparity between the figure before him and the name. And we all laughed uncontrollably.
Really, there are episodes of our struggles that cannot be curated here. Perhaps they are for our memoirs (God willing), and certainly many will never be published because they are meant to be carried to the graves. But I will recall how KRAD and I, and I think 5 others, escaped death by the whiskers. It was in 1995, and we had set out for OAU, Ile Ife, to mobilise for the NANS Convention of that year slated for ABU Zaria. Seven of us from different schools packed in a Peugeot car belonging to Student Union Government Yabatech, and just after Lagos Toll Gate we had an accident. It’s inexplicable how we all came out unscathed.
So, this evening I want to thank God, The Almighty, Who is fulfilling His words as in Jeremiah 29:11. I really find this moment quite historic and I so heartily congratulate KRAD as he joins the Silks.
Brother, congratulations once again, may you come up even higher.
Niyi Ibietan Ph.D, a Communications Scholar lives in Abuja
