Exclusive: Falana rejects Tinubu’s offer of Justice Minister

By Akin Omobolanle

Radical lawyer, Mr Femi Falana will not serve as the Minister of Justice in President Bola Tinubu’s proposed cabinet, our correspondent has learnt. Impeccable sources said Falana declined the offer presented to him by the President.

Reliable sources told our correspondent that the President met with Falana in Aso Rock in June where he was offered to serve as the country’s Minister of Justice. Both President Tinubu and Mr Falana had worked together in the 1990s during the campaign against the bloody military regimes that held Nigeria captive. Tinubu later left for exile due to plots by the late Sanni Abacha regime to eliminate him.

Falana remained in the country where he was detained several times by the military. Falana was still in detention until Abacha died and a new transition to democracy began in 1998.

The reliable source told Irohinoodua that President Tinubu wanted a radical reform of the judiciary, a people-driven approach to human rights and a dedication to radical constitutional reform to strengthen Federalism and the Rule of Law. President Tinubu’s best man for the job was Falana, former President, West African Bar Association,(WABA) who is respected all over the world. At home, Falana commands respect driven by his decades-long commitment to justice and human rights, a career that many times has seen his life threatened and his freedom curtailed.

‘President Tinubu wanted Falana.It would have moved the country forward. But he declined the offer’ a source in All Progressives Congress, (APC) told our correspondent in Abuja.

Falana at an anti-corruption conference last week Wednesday in Abuja said he would ‘disappoint’ many Nigerians because he would ‘not serve in the Tinubu administration’. Though he did not speak on his invitation by the Presidency, our correspondent learnt he was actually invited and met the President after which he declined to serve in the new government.