By Kachi Okezie, Esq

There are countries where government is so meticulously organised that even a junior civil servant cannot change the heading on an official letter without triggering layers of scrutiny. Then there are countries where institutions are so weak that determined individuals occasionally exploit administrative cracks. Nigeria’s latest governance scandal suggests something even more troubling: the possibility that an entire architecture of official legitimacy can be convincingly replicated or, worse still, accommodated—without anyone noticing until the damage has already been done.

The criminal proceedings against Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew are still before the courts, and the presumption of innocence remains a cornerstone of justice. Yet, irrespective of the eventual verdict, the facts already acknowledged by the Presidency itself should send a chill through anyone with an interest in Nigeria’s governance, economy or financial system.

According to the government, the “Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council” never existed. The Presidency has publicly disowned it. The Nigeria Police allege that appointment letters were forged, signatures fabricated and official seals counterfeited. They further allege that the accused individual established an office within the Federal Secretariat Complex, engaged foreign diplomats, sought official diplomatic documentation through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, opened a Central Bank of Nigeria account by misleading the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, and operated dozens of bank accounts linked to similarly fictitious entities.

Perhaps most astonishingly, a council that the government now insists never existed reportedly appeared in the 2026 federal budget approved by the legislature, with an allocation of approximately ₦1.3 billion.

One scarcely knows which fact is the most extraordinary. Each, on its own, would constitute a remarkable administrative failure. Taken together, they describe something far more profound: an institutional ecosystem in which official authority appears capable of being manufactured, recognised and operationalised with alarming ease.

That conclusion should concern every Nigerian. It should concern foreign governments. It should concern international lenders. Above all, it should concern investors.

Capital is remarkably tolerant of political disagreement. Investors routinely operate in jurisdictions marked by noisy politics, partisan conflict and policy uncertainty. What capital struggles to tolerate is institutional ambiguity. Markets can price inflation. They can hedge exchange-rate volatility. They can insure against political risk. What they cannot easily price is uncertainty over whether the institutions with which they are dealing are themselves genuine and functioning as intended.

This is where the Adeyemi affair assumes significance far beyond its criminal dimensions.

The value of a sovereign state rests not merely on its territory, its population or its natural resources, but on confidence in the authenticity of its institutions. Every government letter carries weight because recipients assume it has been properly authorised. Every official appointment commands respect because citizens believe due process has been followed. Every budget line carries legitimacy because Parliament and the Executive are presumed to have scrutinised it. Every account opened by a central bank is trusted because the procedures governing it and the frameworks regulating its use are expected to be among the most rigorous in the country.

Remove confidence from those assumptions, and the machinery of government begins to lose its most valuable asset: credibility.

This is why the Central Bank of Nigeria emerges from this affair facing questions almost as significant as those confronting the accused person himself.

The Presidency has rightly emphasised that no public funds were transferred into the account allegedly opened using forged documentation. That distinction matters legally and financially. But confidence in a central bank does not depend solely on whether money was ultimately lost. It depends equally on confidence that institutional safeguards function before risk materialises.

Central banks occupy a unique position within modern economies. They are not simply bankers to government. They are custodians of monetary credibility, anchors of financial stability and symbols of institutional competence. Every procedural lapse involving a central bank attracts disproportionate attention because financial markets understand that trust, once weakened, is expensive to rebuild.

International correspondent banks, anti-money laundering authorities, financial intelligence units and sovereign-risk analysts do not merely examine outcomes; they examine systems. They ask whether verification procedures are sufficiently robust to prevent abuse. They ask whether institutional controls function independently of personalities. They ask whether governance failures represent isolated anomalies or symptoms of deeper structural weaknesses.

Those questions will now inevitably be asked of Nigeria.

Nor is the Central Bank the only institution whose reputation has been placed under strain.

The Office of the Accountant-General must explain how documentation allegedly associated with a fictitious agency progressed sufficiently to facilitate official financial arrangements. The Budget Office and the National Assembly owe the public a detailed accounting of how an entity now described as non-existent reportedly appeared within appropriated expenditure. The administrators responsible for federal office accommodation must explain how an organisation later declared fictitious operated from government premises. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must account for the procedural path that enabled diplomatic correspondence to advance before concerns were finally raised.

These are not accusations of criminal complicity. They are demands for institutional accountability.

Indeed, one of the greatest mistakes would be to reduce this affair to the actions of a single individual.

Complex bureaucracies rarely fail because of one person alone. They fail when assumptions replace verification, when procedure becomes ritual rather than discipline, and when institutional memory substitutes for institutional vigilance.

It is entirely possible that numerous officials acted in good faith while relying upon documentation they believed had already been verified elsewhere. It is equally possible that negligence, complacency or inadequate controls compounded one another until an elaborate fiction acquired the appearance of official legitimacy.

That possibility is scarcely more reassuring.

For investors, there is little practical difference between corruption and administrative incapacity if both produce unreliable outcomes. Capital does not distinguish between malice and incompetence; it simply adjusts its perception of risk accordingly.

This is the hidden economic cost of governance failure.

The consequences rarely appear immediately in government balance sheets. Instead, they emerge gradually through higher borrowing costs, increased compliance requirements, slower investment decisions, enhanced due diligence, more cautious development finance and greater reluctance among international partners to rely upon official representations without independent verification.

These costs are invisible but real. Every additional questionnaire from a foreign lender. Every prolonged compliance review by an international bank. Every investor who decides to postpone rather than proceed. Every multinational requiring external legal verification before accepting official documentation. These are the compound interest payments of weakened institutional credibility. Nigeria can ill afford them.

The country is simultaneously attempting to stabilise its currency, restore investor confidence, expand non-oil exports, attract manufacturing capital and reposition itself as Africa’s premier investment destination. None of those ambitions is compatible with uncertainty over whether government systems themselves are functioning effectively.

The tragedy is that Nigeria possesses many of the ingredients required for sustained economic transformation: a vast domestic market, abundant entrepreneurial talent, strategic geography and immense natural resources. Yet these comparative advantages are persistently undermined by recurring crises of governance that erode confidence faster than reform can rebuild it.

The Adeyemi affair therefore demands a response that extends well beyond criminal prosecution. An independent judicial inquiry, at the barest minimum.

Every institutional pathway touched by this case should now be subjected to an independent forensic audit. Not an internal administrative review. Not a committee whose findings disappear into official archives. An independent, transparent examination capable of identifying precisely where safeguards failed, who authorised what, which procedures were bypassed, and how similar failures can be prevented. And the findings should be published in full.

Where negligence is established, disciplinary action should follow. Where criminal conduct is uncovered, prosecution should be pursued without regard to rank or office. Where procedural weaknesses are identified, legislative and administrative reforms should be implemented promptly. Nothing less will suffice.

Because the greatest danger facing Nigeria is not that one man allegedly impersonated government.

The greater danger is that citizens, and increasingly the international community, may begin wondering whether government itself always knows who is legitimately acting in its name. That question strikes at the heart of sovereignty.

States derive authority because their institutions command confidence. Once authenticity becomes uncertain, every official act invites suspicion. Every document demands independent verification. Every representation becomes conditional rather than authoritative.

History demonstrates that nations do not lose credibility through one spectacular scandal alone. They lose it through repeated failures to confront uncomfortable truths with honesty, transparency and institutional courage.

Nigeria now stands at precisely such a moment. It can dismiss this episode as the isolated ingenuity of an alleged fraudster, or it can recognise it for what it has already become: a warning that the country’s administrative immune system may no longer be detecting threats before they enter the bloodstream.

The courts will determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. But only the Nigerian state can determine whether it possesses the resolve to restore confidence in itself as a sovereign entity.

For investors, for citizens and for the country’s international standing, that may prove to be the more consequential judgment.

-Kachi Okezie, Esq is a legal practitioner and consultant.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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By Max Amuchie | The Sunday Stew

Following the completion of The Three-Month Sprint series, our editorial roadmap dictated a sharp turn into a four-part methodology series exploring the inner workings of the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI). That exploration will still come. However, the remarkable public interest generated by our detailed account of the 91-day journey that yielded a macro-theoretical trilogy prompted an unexpected, yet necessary, detour.

Readers were intrigued not only by the three analytical constructs themselves, but by the process that made them possible. How did an independent newsroom develop three original analytical constructs in just 91 days? What institutional philosophy made such an experiment possible? And what might this reveal about the future of journalism in the digital age?
Those questions made a further conversation not merely worthwhile, but imperative.

There was another development that reinforced the need for this detour. As the discussions surrounding The Three-Month Sprint unfolded, it became evident that artificial intelligence systems and search algorithms had begun identifying the Sundiata Post Model as a distinct concept and generating summaries and inferences from previously published material. That development carried an important implication. Once a concept enters algorithmic knowledge systems, it begins to acquire a digital identity that may increasingly shape how students, researchers, journalists, and policy practitioners first encounter it. Defining the concept authoritatively therefore became essential, rather than allowing its meaning to be shaped by algorithmic interpretations drawn from scattered publications.

That imperative also required a change in sequence. Before examining the methodology of the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), it was first necessary to explain the institutional framework that gave rise to The Insecurity Triad, the Trinity of State Decay (TSD), and the DSI itself.

Reimagining an Ancient Divide

For generations, the newsroom and the knowledge institution have occupied adjacent but largely separate worlds. One reported events as they unfolded; the other developed theories to explain them. Yet the story told in The Three-Month Sprint suggests that this traditional separation may no longer be as fixed as we have assumed.

As I reflected on the conversations that followed the series, it became increasingly clear that the real story was not simply the creation of three original analytical constructs. It was the emergence of an institutional framework for knowledge production that had quietly taken shape within Sundiata Post. What had appeared to be a sequence of individual achievements was, in fact, evidence of a broader institutional philosophy.
What gradually became clear was that what we have come to call the Sundiata Post Model emerged from a simple yet consequential question: What happens when those two worlds meet?

Defining the Sundiata Post Model

This essay, therefore, formally introduces and defines the Sundiata Post Model as an institutional framework for media-based knowledge production in which an independent newsroom systematically integrates journalism, original research, conceptual innovation, and scholarly dissemination to produce original analytical constructs that contribute to public understanding, academic inquiry, and policy discourse within the global knowledge ecosystem.

After three decades in journalism, I have increasingly found myself asking not only how journalism can better report the world, but how it can contribute more substantially to humanity’s stock of knowledge. Early in a journalist’s career, the questions are naturally immediate: What is the story? How do I report it well? Those questions never lose their importance. Over time, however, another question inevitably begins to emerge: What can journalism itself become? That question has gradually become one of the defining reflections of my professional life. The Sundiata Post Model is my attempt to answer it—not as an abstract theory, but as an institutional framework shaped by experience, reflection, and experimentation.

A definition, however, acquires meaning only when expressed through practice. The Sundiata Post Model did not emerge as an abstract theory conceived in isolation. It evolved through the lived experience of The Sunday Stew—my weekly syndicated column that gradually expanded beyond commentary into a platform for systematic inquiry, conceptual innovation, and scholarly engagement. In many respects, the story of the Model is inseparable from the evolution of the column itself.

Viewed from this perspective, the implications extend beyond Sundiata Post itself. They invite a reconsideration of the role of the newspaper column in the digital age. For much of its history, column writing has been associated primarily with commentary, persuasion, and public reflection. The experience of The Sunday Stew suggests that a column can also become a site of systematic inquiry, conceptual innovation, and knowledge production. Rather than merely interpreting events, it can generate analytical constructs that enter scholarly and policy conversations.

The discussion that follows explores how that reflection gradually evolved into an institutional framework that reimagines the relationship between the newsroom and the knowledge institution.

Connecting to the Global Knowledge Ecosystem

The significance of the Sundiata Post Model extends beyond the production of original analytical constructs. It also lies in its capacity to create pathways through which ideas originating in an independent newsroom can enter global scholarly conversations. The publication of working papers, the establishment of the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), engagement with scholarly repositories, and participation in international research networks demonstrate that journalism and academic knowledge production need not exist in separate institutional silos.

The evolution of The Sunday Stew into a platform for knowledge production also produced another, less anticipated consequence. It began to create pathways through which ideas developed within an independent newsroom could travel beyond journalism into the global knowledge ecosystem.

My appointment as an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer by ScienceOpen—the Berlin, Germany-based global research discovery and scholarly publishing platform that connects researchers, publishers, universities, and research institutions across disciplines—illustrates this broader trajectory. While the appointment was based on my scholarly profile and publication record, it also reflects the growing permeability between journalism and the academy that the Sundiata Post Model seeks to advance. It suggests that original ideas developed within an independent newsroom can participate in global research ecosystems when supported by rigorous methodology, systematic documentation, and scholarly dissemination.

The significance, therefore, lies not in one appointment but in what it represents: the possibility that an independent newsroom can participate credibly in global knowledge production.
This is perhaps one of the most important implications of the Sundiata Post Model: it demonstrates that an independent newsroom in Africa or elsewhere can contribute not only to daily public discourse but also to the production, circulation, and evaluation of knowledge within the global academic community.

An Emerging Body of Knowledge

What makes this evolution particularly noteworthy is not simply the number of constructs that have emerged, but the coherence that binds them together. Within a relatively short period, Sundiata Post has developed:
•The Insecurity Triad — a foundational analytical framework reconceptualising insecurity as an interconnected ecosystem;
•The Trinity of State Decay (TSD) — a macro-diagnostic theory explaining the structural dynamics of state decay and the progressive decoupling of sovereign authority;
•The Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI) — a quantitative metric for measuring the degree of decoupling between formal sovereignty and effective state authority; and
•The Sundiata Post Model — an institutional framework explaining how an independent newsroom can systematically generate original analytical constructs.

Collectively, they constitute an interdisciplinary body of work situated at the intersection of six disciplines: political science, international relations, sociology, security studies, quantitative social science, and journalism and media studies. Together, they demonstrate the capacity of media-based knowledge production to generate original analytical constructs across disciplinary boundaries.

There is an important progression here. The first three are substantive analytical constructs. The fourth explains the institutional framework that made their development possible. In doing so, the conversation shifts from “Here are four original ideas” to “Here is an institutional framework capable of systematically producing original ideas.”
That distinction helps explain why the Three-Month Sprint generated such widespread interest. The real story was never simply that three analytical constructs were developed within 91 days. The deeper question was how an independent newsroom could develop an institutional framework capable of producing original analytical constructs.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story is not that four original constructs emerged from one independent newsroom. It is that their emergence suggests that, under the right institutional conditions, the modern newsroom can evolve into a knowledge-producing institution.

Looking Ahead

The Sundiata Post Model is ultimately an argument that a newsroom can become more than a publisher of news. It can become a producer of enduring knowledge whose ideas travel from journalism into scholarship, policy, and increasingly, the algorithmic knowledge systems that shape how the world discovers and understands new concepts. Whether adopted, adapted, or challenged, the Model is offered as a contribution to a broader conversation about what journalism can become in the twenty-first century. If the twentieth century established the newsroom as society’s information institution, the twenty-first century may yet establish it as a knowledge institution. That is the possibility the Sundiata Post Model seeks to explore.

Finally, it is important to emphasise that, like any institutional framework, the Sundiata Post Model is a proposition to be examined, tested, refined, and, where necessary, challenged through practice and scholarly engagement.

This introductory essay has sought to define the Sundiata Post Model and explain why it emerged. The next two parts of this series will examine its institutional architecture and the conditions for long-term sustainability that will enable such a model to endure. If journalism is to become a genuine knowledge institution, it must be intellectually rigorous, institutionally coherent, and economically sustainable.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.

•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO & Theorist-In-Chief, Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), and an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer at ScienceOpen. He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis as well as the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes ‘The Sunday Stew’, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.
X (formerly Twitter): @MaxAmuchie | Email: [email protected] | Tel: +234(0)8053069436

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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Jacob Zuma was President of South Africa when he declared on October 21, 2013 that South Africa should not “think like Africans in Africa, generally”. The remark, delivered at an ANC manifesto forum at Wits University, elicited gasps across Africa. History remembers it as the infamous “I am not an African” speech.

As of three days ago, the Nigerian government has evacuated 801 Nigerians from South Africa. From city to city, Black South Africans were almost unanimous that their poverty was because of Blacks from other African countries.

“Go home. Go back to your country.” They told everyone.

The English word ‘xenophobia’ has been around for almost 200 years. The Greek have ‘xenos’ (stranger) and ‘phobos’ (fear). Those are the parts with which the light-fingered English language forged ‘xenophobia’, which now means “the fear, hatred, or deep distrust of people perceived as foreigners, outsiders, or culturally different.” But my teacher said I should not apply that word to South Africans and their current ‘Africa Must Go’ campaign. The fear and hatred they have for foreigners know no boundaries; the hatred is geo-colour sensitive. Only Black Africans from outside South Africa are routinely marked out for rage. My teacher said the proper word for that hatred is Afrophobia.

Zuma’s 2013 statement reveals something deeper than a careless pronouncement. It betrays the ideology of South African exceptionalism – the belief that the country is more civilised, more entitled and somehow less ‘African’ than the rest of the continent.

With ‘exceptionalism’ is ‘Afrophobia’, South Africa’s peculiar disease. South Africa’s violent eunuchs will not stop blaming fellow Africans for their personal failures and frustrations. Exactly as Zuma said, they’ve always bought into their own hype of supremacy, and because of that, they think it makes good economic sense to view outsiders as inferior targets for hostility and their expulsion the elixir for their economic impotence.

Should Nigeria and Nigerians, in retaliation, ask South African companies to leave Nigeria? Should they not? These are uncomfortable questions. Yet, every fresh wave of Afrophobic attacks in South Africa makes it harder to avoid. A country whose companies earn billions of dollars annually from Nigerian consumers owes Nigerians more than condolences whenever they are hunted, assaulted and dispossessed on South African streets. It owes them protection.

At the beginning of the latest madness two months ago, Edo senator, Adams Oshiomhole, asked Nigeria to “take away the South African rights” from what Afrophobes have in Nigeria. He mentioned the telecoms company, MTN. Adams was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Other big people thought negotiation would soften the heart of the arrogant who think they are specially created.

Exceptionalism says, “We are better than you.” At its most arrogant, it also says, “Without us, you cannot survive.”

Years ago, Nigeria’s juju music maestro, Ebenezer Obey, answered that conceit in a song: “Without me, my friend will not eat; without me, my friend will not drink.” Then he rebuked the boaster: “Stop saying so; only God Almighty sustains all.” Obey understood what some politicians forget. No nation is indispensable.

On June 7 this year, while appealing for calm, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that “many communities have expressed anger about the number of foreign nationals running spaza shops, trading stores and other informal outlets”. He said many South Africans believed that “foreign enterprises are squeezing out South Africans from operating in these markets in their own communities”. The South African President then stressed that “these concerns must not be dismissed”. Government, he said, has a duty to “support local enterprise” and ensure that South Africans “participate meaningfully in the economy”. Fair enough. But does the Nigerian government owe its own citizens any less?

If South Africa may ‘lawfully’ deploy policies that strengthen domestic enterprise, Nigeria should not hesitate to adopt equally ‘lawful’ measures that strengthen Nigerian businesses where South African firms dominate strategic sectors. Reciprocity is one of the oldest principles of statecraft.

Read Also: WHEN TERROR PAYS (Part IV B): Justice deferred

If South Africa insists it is unlike the rest of Africa, should it not also surrender the privileges it enjoys precisely because it is African? Why do South African companies flourish across the continent, especially in Nigeria? Every Nigerian who buys MTN airtime, subscribes to DStv, renews a GOtv decoder or streams Showmax contributes to the profits of South African corporations, the dividends of South African shareholders and the tax revenues of the South African state.

Apartheid means “apartness”. There is a cruel irony in watching a people whose freedom was secured by the sacrifices, solidarity and hospitality of other African countries now deploy the logic of exclusion against fellow Africans.

But “two can play that game.” And they should. Publicly available data shows that Nigeria does not merely receive South African investment; it invests in South Africa every single day. Nigeria substantially finances South Africa.

Nigeria is MTN Group’s largest market by subscribers and one of the principal engines of its profitability. It is a South African company. Records show that in the 2025 financial year, MTN Nigeria generated more than ₦5.2 trillion in revenue, accounting for roughly one-quarter of the group’s total revenue. MTN Group reported service revenue of R218.5 billion for 2025, with Nigeria contributing about 27 percent of the figure. Those earnings enrich MTN’s shareholders, many of them South African pension funds and retail investors, and ultimately enlarge Pretoria’s tax base.

MultiChoice, another South African company, tells much the same story. Millions of Nigerian households have financed DStv, GOtv, SuperSport and Showmax for years. Those subscriptions sustain a company whose headquarters, shareholders and principal tax obligations remain rooted in South Africa. In its 2025 financial year, MultiChoice contributed billions of rand in taxes, with a substantial share going directly to the South African government.

I told a friend that there should be consequences for what happened in South Africa last week. The friend told me that the consequences “will not be mob retaliation but statecraft”.

I nodded in agreement. It is for the government to do.

Diplomacy history is replete with cases of states using economic instruments to pursue foreign-policy objectives. The United States has, for instance, repeatedly done so through tariffs, sanctions and investment restrictions under presidents of both political parties. As law professors Ashley Deeks and Andrew Hayashi observe in ‘Tax Law as Foreign Policy’, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have shown “the same growing appetite for using economic tools to pursue foreign policy and national security goals”. Nigeria would not be inventing a new warhead if it fires this missile at South Africa.

My argument is about the responsibility of governments. If Pretoria repeatedly fails to protect Nigerians while South African companies continue to earn enormous profits from Nigeria, Abuja is entitled to review the terms of that economic relationship. Tax policy, competition law, procurement rules and investment regulations are legitimate instruments of foreign policy. States use them every day.

The old folktale warned us about the crow “beautified with our feathers”. Those who now peck at our eyes would do well to remember whose feathers first enabled them to fly. Oore pẹ́, aṣiwèrè gbàgbé. The foolish dismiss old favours because they were received long ago.

Enough of the insults. South African companies operating in Nigeria must be made to feel the heat of the fire raging against Nigerians in South Africa. South Africa cannot, through its businesses, continue to feast on Nigeria’s vast market while Nigerians are hunted in South African streets. As the Yoruba warn, if you let an ant climb you unchecked, it will keep climbing until it reaches even the forbidden place. Tell the Government of Nigeria that the Golden Rule has its counterpart in international relations: reciprocity. Or, in everyday language: do me, I do you.

Friendship demands reciprocity. So does commerce. Apply pressure where it matters. Their businesses are their pressure points; they are their balls. Hold those firmly enough, and the message will be heard.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Courts are creatures of law. Everything about them, including what they can do (jurisdiction) and how they can do it (procedure) is prescribed and regulated by law. As such, it should never be said that what a court or judge cannot do does not exist. In Nigeria, however, some judges seem to glory in a reputation for “anything goes”. This roll of the disreputable judge has a new member. His name is Isa Hamma Dashen.

Dashen, the community into which young Isa Hamma was born on 4 April 1962, is located in Jada Local Government Area of Adamawa State in north-east Nigeria.

Basic education for him began at the Dashen Primary School.

In 1975, Isa Hamma proceeded to the Government Secondary School in Ganye for his high school. Following remedial studies at the College of Preliminary Studies first in Yola (capital of Adamawa State) and then in Zaria, Kaduna State, he gained admission into the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in 1983 to study law.

Following graduation in 1986, Isa Hamma proceeded to the Nigerian Law School in Lagos. A mishap in the Bar Finals delayed his admission to the Nigerian Bar in 1987. Following a re-sit, he eventually enrolled as a lawyer in Nigeria in March 1988.

Isa Hamma’s entire working life has been spent in the public service. Some will suggest that this equips him to know how to bend to the winds of power.

For his National Youth Service, Isa Dashen was posted to the Ibadan Municipal Council in Oyo State. Upon conclusion of that programme, he returned to his home state where he began his career in the court system. In 1989, he joined the registry staff of the judiciary in Adamawa State. Three years later, in 1992, he became a Magistrate. By September 1998, he was a Chief Magistrate.

On 2 December 2015, after 23 years as a Magistrate, Muhammadu Buhari appointed Isa Hamma Dashen as a judge of the Federal High Court.

In the period of over ten years that he has worked as a judge of the Federal High Court, Isa Hamma Dashen has traversed much of the country and dealt with an impressive variety of cases. Few would have made him as infamous as his most recent.

On 10 November 2025, one Takori Mohammed Sani, a lawyer who claimed to be the “Pro-tem National Secretary” of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) led three other claimants, including Abdulmumin Ohiare Abdulsalami and Pius Ugboja, Chairman and Secretary respectively of the party in Kogi State, to sue the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the Federal High Court in Lokoja, capital of Kogi State. They claimed that they began the process of registration of the party in 2017 and that, although they had fulfilled all the conditions prescribed, the INEC refused them registration. They, therefore, asked the court to order the INEC to register them.

When it notified the applicants on 19 September 2025 of its decision to decline their application for registration as a party, INEC claimed that it was because their logo resembled that of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), an existing and lawful political party. The political association offered to remedy this but received no response from the INEC.

In opposition to the claim of the applicants, INEC – in the words of the court – “introduced a new and inconsistent basis for the refusal of registration, namely, a purported similarity between the plaintiffs’ logo and that of a different political association referred to as Peace Movement Party (PMP), which was admittedly never communicated to the Plaintiffs prior to litigation.”

On Human Rights Day (10 December) in 2025, Isa Dashen handed down his judgment. He found as a fact that the political association had fulfilled all the conditions needed for its recognition as a political party and that INEC did not have the discretion to deny them recognition as such. In the circumstance, he ordered INEC to register the party “forthwith”.

Isa Dashen made three additional findings which would prove significant in the light of what transpired subsequently. First, he found that there was no evidence “showing that this PMP ground was ever communicated to the Plaintiffs at any time.”

Second, he described the effort by INEC to bring the PMP into the proceedings as both “belated” and an “impermissible afterthought”.

Third, Isa Dashen held that “with respect to logo similarity, Section 222(e) of the Constitution does not empower INEC to reject a logo merely because it visually resembles that of an existing party.”

With even greater force, it surely cannot be, therefore, that INEC can refuse to recognize a party based on claims that its logo resembles that of a non-existent party. But that is exactly the kind of somersault that Isa Dashen managed to contrive.

Nearly five months after this judgment, on 5 May 2026, one Emmanuel Uzowuru, who described himself as “Pro-tem National Legal Adviser” of the PMP, filed an application in the original suit asking the court to extend the time within which he could move it to overturn (vacate) its earlier judgment of 10 December 2025. By the same application, Mr. Uzowuru asked Isa Dashen to vacate his judgment of 10 December 2025 because the logo of the NDC resembled that of the PMP.

Mind you, unlike the NDC or APC, the PMP is not a registered political party. Isa Dashen had already ruled in December 2025 that the issue of logo was not a basis for denying registration to a political party and that INEC had never at any point in the process brought the issue of PMP to the attention of the NDC. Moreover, Mr. Uzowuru was not a party to the case or judgment he wanted overturned and he was not seeking to be joined even at that late stage.

In other words, Mr. Uzowuru asked Isa Dashen to make a mockery of himself and his court. He must have been overwhelmed when the judge ruled on 26 June to grant his outlandish desire, and then some.

The ruling is notable, however, for what it did not do or say.

Isa Hamma did not join the Mr. Uzowuru as a party to the case. He did not consider the application by him to extend the time within which he could have applied to set aside the judgment; and he did not consider or overrule his earlier findings that PMP was not an issue in the case before him.

In his haste to accomplish the kinds of things no court can do – unless it is corrupt – Isa Hamma Dashen proceeded to set aside his own judgment of 10 December 2025. He ordered the parties to “take all necessary and permissible procedural steps…. for the effectual determination of the substantive dispute.”

In saying so, Isa Dashen insinuated that there was a dispute between PMP, NDC, and INEC. This was precisely an issue that he had disposed of in the negative in his judgment of 2025. He could not re-open it and surely not at the instance of an applicant with no standing to do so.

It is not as if PMP was without options. It could have initiated a separate case. It could also have applied to the Court of Appeal as an affected party for permission to appeal against the judgment. It chose instead to make the kind of application that no one qualified as a judge can countenance and only a disreputable one can consider.

Columnist, Olu Fasan, accuses Isa Hamma Dashen of “judicial recklessness and vandalism.” I will go further to say that his ruling of 26 June 2026 is a perfect exhibit of “what a judge cannot do does not exist”. Whenever that can be said of a judgment, you can be certain that it is corrupt on the face of the record.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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Insecurity has ravished and humiliated Nigeria enough. Let’s arrest it frontally now, writes Monday Phillips Ekpe

One of the most unfortunate fallouts of the reign of terror that has bedevilled Nigeria for close to two decades is its numbing effect on the populace. What used to scare us and elicit commensurate thoughts and actions to tackle it has somehow resulted in attitudes that range from denial to resignation, diffusion to helplessness and anxiety to phobia. And, at other times, to arguments over its proper categorisation and semantics. Just imagine why the sweat over the campaign by some individuals to remove the label of terrorism from bandits. As if we always need a situation in the magnitude of the 9/11 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, masterminded by Osama bin Laden in which thousands of people were massacred within minutes, to qualify for terrorism.

Introducing such trivialities can only complicate a matter that has literally brought the country to its knees. Call it terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping or banditry. The strain that binds them together is the impact on the people, particularly the unarmed. The practitioners of these evil trades are mostly wielders of arms and ammunitions, the types that even those authorised to monopolise the ownership of instruments of violence do not possess in good volume and quality. An average Nigerian wakes up in the morning and can no longer take his safety for granted.

It’s that bad. If our declared demography is to be believed, up to half of the population – a chunk of the youth segment – don’t know any other life outside managing to keep safe. If not from personal experiences or of those known to them, the news they’re constantly exposed to are crippling enough. And don’t doubt for a second the gravity of this pervasive insecurity or the concerns it has generated everywhere. It’s now common to hear some television anchors and reporters in the southern part of the country worry about the menace “getting too close” to their homes (comfort zones). Really? So, Damaturu and Maiduguri are not home enough?

Time was when bombings, wanton murders and wholesale destruction of towns and villages were classified by some persons as the preserve, the self-inflicted lot of the north, beginning from the north-east. But, to the discerning, there weren’t any strong grounds to embrace such myopic, sabotaging thoughts. For one, Nigeria is a single geographical entity. Even those who doubt and disparage its nationhood must come to terms, at least in their sober moments, with this “rude” reality. No physical borders between the states. And, certainly, no official encumbrances of the movement of goods, including cattle, and human beings. It was, therefore, always going to be a matter of time for the criminalities to attain a nationwide spread if they were not confronted head-on.

The basis for this prediction is well-founded and in our recent history. Take the abductions of people to press for ransom or some other blackmails. Many Nigerians would remember that this crime as a regular national pastime has its origins in the Niger Delta. Something that started ostensibly as a tool for corporate agitations was soon hijacked by the hoodlums there for filthy lucre. With time, kidnapping moved upwards, first to the south-east where its mercantile values were fully explored. By the time it got to the north, this nocuous vocation was received by more vicious criminals who treated life (they still do) as a casually dispensable item. Although kidnappings still take place in many parts of the nation, the ones up north have remained largely more organised, audacious, brutal and relentless.

The severity of this national dilemma demands that we can’t afford to politicise it any further. This sort of handling has its roots in the mischaracterisation that began during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan when the crisis was believed in certain quarters to have been cooked by some northern interests to get rid of a president from the south. Curiously, such harmful opinions have begun to emerge. Since President Muhammadu Buhari, a northern, didn’t have respite while his administration lasted, what’s the impetus for that insinuation today? The duty to lead the country away from this destructive mindset rests on President Bola Tinubu. He shouldn’t blame the opposition now as he was in the vanguard of calling Jonathan’s government “clueless” in those days.

His Democracy Day speech this year is largely predictable except for one issue related to Nigerians’ cardinal need to stay alive and well. Hear his advice to the reprehensible death professionals in our midst: “To bandits, kidnappers, and sponsors of terror: Surrender or face the full force of the Nigerian state. These windows of surrender will not remain open forever.” Ha! That is bland! Sir, at this point, advising these merchants of human blood shouldn’t be a part of your job description. Yours is to preside over their own elimination in order to sanitise Nigeria.

The interminable engagements of our security operatives with them haven’t yielded the desired results. The felons are all over the social media displaying their victories freely. The souls of the officers and men who have been neutralised in the course of withstanding these odious elements and those of the hundreds of thousands of citizens sent to their early graves mustn’t be further traumatised with knee-jerk responses. Actually, hearing that from the president makes him resemble someone pandering to people like Sheikh Abubakar Gumi who have been campaigning for negotiating with bandits, a position that hasn’t produced any meaningful outcomes and is never likely to.

And to his compatriots, Tinubu declared: “No mercy will be shown to those who trade in the blood of Nigerians. At a time like this, let us not assign blame or point fingers. Crime has no ethnicity. We must stand united and be assured that the enemies of our nation shall soon be history. We will triumph over terror and continue to build a more prosperous nation.” A tiring presidential refrain that has survived Jonathan, Buhari and, now, Tinubu himself.

Excuses for the failure to combat these existential challenges have gone on for too long. Prominent among them is that our soldiers are faced with asymmetric war rather than the conventional one they are trained to prosecute. Their syllabuses and training ought to have since been reviewed to reflect the present realities that bully us unendingly with contempt. After all, ours isn’t the first country that harbours characters who hide behind religion to torment and subjugate others. Or cause massive havoc with other motivations. Talks of rejigging our security architecture have gone on forever. Promises to adequately equip and motivate the military personnel are broken records. Most Nigerians find the idea of reintegrating “repentant” terrorists into the society ridiculous and shameful. It’s time to prioritise workable solutions above politicking.

Dr Ekpe is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board
X: @monday_ekpe2

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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By Kachi Okezie, Esq.

A bail ruling is usually a quiet affair, grounded in law and fact, noticed mostly by the parties and their counsel. The ruling delivered by Justice Darius Khobo in Kaduna this week was quiet in tone but quite loud in implication. This is because it turned on a contradiction no legal system can comfortably ignore.

Here’s what happened: former Kaduna State governor Nasir el-Rufai, standing trial at the instance of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), sought bail for the third time. The offences are bailable, all parties agree. His application is on medical grounds. His lawyers tendered a report signed by a consultant at the National Hospital, Abuja, stating that he has metastatic prostate cancer. The ICPC countered with a letter from the Chief Medical Director of the same hospital stating that the National Hospital had no record of Nasir el-Rufai as a patient. Faced with that contradiction, the court declined bail.

Now, strip away the names and politics, and the issue is stark. A public institution has issued two irreconcilable accounts of the same fact. One, from a consultant whose qualifications were not disputed, says the applicant was examined and diagnosed. The other, from the hospital’s chief accounting officer and custodian of its records, says he was never a patient. Both cannot simultaneously be true. A court confronted with such divergence must ask not merely which letterhead carries greater authority, but what the law requires when evidence conflicts; who bears the burden of resolving it, and what it means for public confidence when a federal hospital cannot agree with itself about whether it rendered treatment.

The facts before the court were limited. The application did not fail because the offences were unbailable, nor because the court held that the illness, if proved, could never justify bail. It failed because the judge was not satisfied that the medical ground had been established. He had before him a doctor’s report and the CMD’s denial. The consultant was not called to testify. The hospital register was not produced. No scan, laboratory result, payment receipt, or clinic card connected the applicant to the hospital’s records. The CMD was not cross-examined. In those circumstances, the judge concluded that the applicant had not discharged the burden resting on him.

That explains the legal posture of the ruling. But it is the institutional posture that, for me, is more troubling.

The National Hospital, Abuja is a public tertiary institution funded through the Appropriation Act, audited by the Auditor-General, and overseen by the Federal Ministry of Health. Its credibility rests on the integrity of its records. Every patient generates a file, a hospital number, attendance records, laboratory requests, pharmacy records, and clinical notes. Consultants practise within a system that documents, bills, and archives treatment.

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For the Chief Medical Director to state that there is no record of the applicant as a patient is to make a claim about that entire administrative chain. It is to say that none of those ordinary traces exists. If a consultant employed by the same hospital nevertheless diagnosed and treated the applicant, then one of two things must be true. Either the hospital’s record-keeping failed in this instance, or the treatment occurred outside its official processes. Both possibilities carry consequences far beyond this bail application.

If the records are unreliable, every medical report issued by the hospital becomes more vulnerable to challenge. Courts rely on such reports daily in bail proceedings, compensation claims, and questions of fitness to stand trial. Employers, insurers, and foreign embassies also depend on them. If the institution cannot reliably identify whom it has treated, its credibility is weakened wherever its reports are relied upon.

If, instead, the consultant’s report was issued without the patient passing through the hospital’s formal processes, then the issue becomes one of professional and administrative discipline and ethics. A consultant’s opinion derives institutional weight because it is presumed to arise from clinical examination conducted within the hospital’s established systems and protocols. That’s quality assurance. Detached from that framework, the opinion remains that of a qualified doctor but loses the institutional assurance that ordinarily accompanies it. In those circumstances, the court is entitled to require more than the report itself.

None of this bears on the defendant’s guilt or innocence. The ICPC’s case will stand or fall on its evidence, and the presumption of innocence remains intact. Nor is it a comment on whether the former governor is ill. Metastatic prostate cancer is a grave diagnosis which, if accurate, demands proper medical treatment irrespective of politics. The issue before the court was narrower: had the applicant presented credible, verifiable evidence sufficient to justify bail on medical grounds? The judge concluded that he had not because the institution expected to verify the claim instead disavowed it.

The solution is procedural rather than rhetorical. The Evidence Act already provides the tools. The court can summon the consultant to testify and produce the case notes. It can order the hospital to produce outpatient and oncology registers for the relevant dates. It can require imaging reports, histology results, and chain-of-custody documentation. The applicant can waive medical confidentiality and authorise disclosure of his records. The ICPC can cross-examine. The conflict between the consultant’s report and the CMD’s letter can then be resolved by reference to primary evidence rather than competing letterheads.

Until that happens, the credibility crisis remains. That crisis is not the judge’s creation. It is the product of an institution speaking with two voices. A public hospital cannot be uncertain about its own patients, and a court cannot safely rely on a medical claim the hospital itself says it cannot verify. Between those positions lies the evidence that matters: registers, clinical notes, laboratory reports, imaging, and sworn testimony.

But the significance of this case extends well beyond one defendant or one hospital. It speaks to a broader challenge confronting public administration in Nigeria: the erosion of institutional credibility. Whether the institution is a court, a hospital, a ministry, a regulator, or any other organ of the state, the same principle applies. Public confidence depends upon institutions speaking with one coherent, verifiable voice.

That is why recent controversies over public bodies whose legal existence, budgetary allocations, or financial operations have themselves become matters of public dispute should concern every Nigerian, regardless of political affiliation. The particulars differ, but the underlying pathology is the same. When official records, official statements, and official conduct no longer align, it is not merely a communications problem. It is a crisis of institutional integrity.

The Kaduna ruling therefore does more than keep a defendant in custody pending trial. It holds up a mirror not only to the National Hospital but to every public institution whose authority depends on the credibility of its records. It reminds counsel that, in contested proceedings, a medical report is the beginning of proof, not its conclusion. It reminds public officials that institutional authority cannot be sustained by assertion alone; it must be supported by systems that are accurate, transparent and internally consistent.

Institutional integrity is not an abstract ideal. It is part of the infrastructure of governance and justice. Courts depend on accurate records. Citizens depend on official assurances. Investors depend on regulatory certainty. Democracies depend on public trust. When a doctor’s report and a hospital’s official denial collide, the injury is not confined to one bail application; it reaches every courtroom and every public institution that will tomorrow ask to be believed.

The real lesson from the El-Rufai bail hearing is therefore not about the fortunes of a former governor. It is about the indispensable value of institutional credibility. A society in which public institutions contradict themselves cannot long command the confidence of its citizens. The only durable remedy is to insist that institutions speak with one voice because they are anchored to one set of verifiable facts. That is not merely good administration. It is the foundation upon which the rule of law itself rests.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

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