By Lanre Adewole

When Yoruba want to address a perplexity, they can reach for “oro buruku tohun terin” (tragicomical) or resort to another wisecrack, “oro so sini lenu o bu iyo si, iso re ko se ponla, iyo re ko se tu sonu (a bitter-sweet), which elaborately translates as a matter simultaneously stuffing the mouth with salt and fart, you can’t down the fart for its fetidness and won’t want to spit out salt for its sweetness.

If someone called in for a mend, further messes a mess, Yoruba will call his kind “atorose boro je”. The one expected to straighten things up has further mangled it. In just about 100 days under the management of Bayo Ojulari, Nigeria’s gang-raped, malnourished but still dripping cash cow, the national oil company, NNPCL, is reportedly bursting at the hems with unprecedented scandals, culminating in the multiple interrogations of the somewhat-new CEO, by anti-corruption agency. For a leadership to become that enmeshed in just three months and a few days of operation is a record even in a scandal-ridden Nigerian public service.

In the course of one of the several petrol scarcity bouts Nigerians endured under now-late Muhammadu Buhari’s impotent presidency, his soft and smooth-talking oil czar, the immediate head of the Nigerian State oil company, Mele Kyari, was in Lagos to brainstorm with media gatekeepers. Yours truly was in attendance in representative capacity, just as in many of such “sessions” I was privileged to attend during the almost six years he was Group CEO of NNPCL. His tenure ran from 7th July 2019 to 2nd April 2025 when the Tinubu administration justifiably terminated him.

Before I return to the Mele tori, I should quickly point the proximity of his first name to the Aramaic “Mene” which means “numbered”. Daniel interpreting it to King Belshazzar in the Bible took it together with “Tekel and Upharsin” to declare an end to the king’s reign and the division of his vast kingdom. Maybe someday a real Daniel will come to judgement to implement the MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN long etched on the oily walls of NNPC by the hand, screaming transparency.

So Kyari got a large turnout despite the biting scarcity and he was his mesmerizing self until the questions started flying. Then he stunned the gathering with the claim fuel was available, using some complicated slides, charts and pictures, including some tankers waiting at some only-God-knows point. So why aren’t we getting to buy at filling stations?, practically everyone in attendance queried. Then he began another round of some oily talk about Tompolo, subsidy, the approaching 2023 presidential election, loading depots, landing cost etcetera.

Long story short, Kyari couldn’t point any of the senior journalists to any pump in Lagos to get a drop of petrol despite his repeated assurance that there was fuel in the country. I left the meeting running on my last drop. I branched a couple of filling stations on my way home; they reported zero supplies. I quietly asked myself if anyone would believe I just left a meeting with the man in charge of Nigeria’s oil industry. Then, a radio station began a funny analysis of “the fuel situation in the country” with some fellows attempting to deconstruct what they knew practically nothing about as studio analysts. There was nothing they were saying, at least, in the direction of the verifiable data Mele provided us, despite obviously withholding the information about the real reason available fuel wasn’t in circulation; the coming withdrawal of subsidy, which stakeholders thought would be phased, until some strange spirit possessed Tinubu at his inauguration and he decided to pin everyone down for a furiously charging earthmover to roll over. May God forgive Mr. President.

I simply switched off the car radio while laughing at myself in self-pity. Imagine just sipping coffee with the man that should make available what is badly needed and still left the diner scratching your head where to get it. That day, I concluded that all the streams (up, down, mid) in the oil sector are only for those initiated into the cults running it, to swim. Nigerians are their maga or mugu or mumu. But those pressing the mumu button should be careful. Every day is for the thief. The imminent one day for the owner may come with catastrophic consequences, considering that the oil thieves are already stealing too much for the owners to see.

Tinubu eventually applying the Mene, Mene phrase to Mele, would always be a good call, especially if Ojulari, his replacement, eventually clawed the corporation from the cesspool it has been mired for decades to public trust. Those who thought they knew the Yoruba man from the North wagered he could and would when he was resuming office. Are they still that confident now?

But as sneaky as the oil business was, under Mele, what can’t be denied him was his messaging ability even when lying (like most politicians) or just being politically correct, as noticed during his off-record pressers in the build-up to the poll when he would drop the microphone, switch off the sound system, to sound off on what each of the three leading candidates in the election represented for the sector. You could hardly figure his choice of the trio though deducible reasoning would suggest his readings of the poll numbers and the election as Tinubu’s, to lose. His soundbites I won’t share here, since the sessions weren’t originally for the public. Despite being a geologist, Kyari seemed to have mastered the art of public speaking, a deficit that is beginning to look major for his successor. If his “I’m a Northerner and will forever seek the greater good of the region despite being of Yoruba ethnic stock” inaugural speech could be excused as a baby-step misstep, his flip-flop on issues of policy, the emerging pattern of profligacy, disregard for institutional accountability (though legislative probes are mostly avenue for jumbo lucre), opacity in massive spendings, poor prioritization in the face of an urgent need for reform and fresh beginning, among other meltdowns and letdowns, are pointing to Ojulari not showcasing the desired fidelity to the screaming change the oil sector needs.

Just within 18 days in the exited July, he had done the shifty Schiff thing (like Trump will describe his congressional Democrat nemesis Adam Schiff) on a policy as defining as the privatization of the refineries, which according to a report in Premium Times he is yet to visit after more than three months in office, despite being the largest asset of the corporation he was brought in to superintend. What manner of leader is one who prefers junketing to irrelevant places like Kigali for a retreat than a more insightful one would have held inside the boardroom of the Port Harcourt refinery to demonstrate a bonding with what he is entrusted to fix. But no, Mr. Kigali must hire multiple private jets to the capital of Rwanda for a retreat about how to save refineries in Nigeria. Are we sure the trip wasn’t actually about those chiseled-neck East-Central African belles, considering the reported vexed mood within the corporation about some female assistants and all that? Is Ojulari now the fictional Mr. Giwa, the trader, whose only methodology is to sell or not?

Many industry watchers and stakeholders actually staked on his leadership to be some salt to the system, ushering the country into a new era of accountability and prosperity. Despite my skepticism, I also found his aura graceful. He didn’t come, cutting the image of the prodigal he is projecting now. His appearance too can be magnetic, making him an instant sweetheart. Like his predecessor, he is also beginning to roll out fantastic profit figures even if the refineries are almost back to being moribund, which he explained as being put too early into use while still under repair. He has also cried out about being targeted for a brutal takedown by some unmasked principalities.

While the office he holds would always attract envy and schemings for replacement opportunity, he is also not helping those who bet their names on him, including the appointor, to be a fresh breath. What he has left in the mouth of Nigerians so far is a mixture of salt and fart. While no one wants to volley out the salt, who wants to lick the putrid? A detour isn’t too late.

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

By Lasisi Olagunju

Who killed Dele Giwa? Who was Gloria Okon and where is she today? How did David Mark accurately predict in 1994 that Sani Abacha would spend five years in power and would attempt to contest a multi-party presidential election with only himself as candidate? Why did M. K.O. Abiola contest the 1993 election even after he had been told eight years earlier that he would one day successfully gun for the nation’s top job but would have the crown blown away by a storm at his crowning ceremony?

A book that contains those details (with even more ghastly ones) is certain to stir up a hurricane across the nation. That is what Mr. Yakubu Mohammed, Dele Giwa’s friend and colleague at the Concord and Newswatch, has written. He gave the autobiography the title: ‘Beyond Expectations’. The old media entrepreneur graciously last week ushered me into the locked room of his soon-to-be-released book of stories. He gave me an advance copy for a preview which this piece is all about.

Good books are a compass to the past and a guide to the future. If not for a book as this, how many of us would recollect that in April 1994, Brigadier-General David Mark in exile in London told Dan Agbese, editor-in-chief of Newswatch, in an interview that General Sani Abacha was determined to stay put, at least for five years, and thereafter, transmute into a civilian president through an election in which he would be the only contestant? That was five months after Abacha sacked Ernest Shonekan and gullible Nigerians were waiting on him to cede power after six months to M.K.O. Abiola. It turned out that David Mark was right; pro-June 12 Nigerians who enthroned Abacha were dead wrong.

Was it David Mark’s party or the party of NADECO that eventually deposed Abacha? This question is a knot in the untangling hands of time. But the same David Mark who saw tomorrow in 1994 is in charge of a democratic onslaught against the incumbent president today. Mark is a trained marksman. It would be scary to have a reticent sniper gentleman officer leading a coalition against a self-sure president and his over-confident party. My dictionary says a sniper is a marksman. It says a sniper is a dead shot with uncommon skills. His missile is long-range, his position concealed. He employs stealth and camouflage techniques to remain undetected, and he is rarely detected. His training is specialised, his tools are high-precision; and his sight telescopic. The marksman’s engagement of targets is with pin-point accuracy. God help those at the receiving end of his shots.

Yakubu Mohammed complains loudly in his book that he suffered several arrests and detentions from the government and its agents. But it is always better to lose one’s cap than to lose one’s head. Hubert Ogunde sings in an album that a man that is beaten by the rains but escapes the withering celts of Sango should learn to thank God (eni òjò pa tí Sàngó ò pa, opé l’ó ye é). Mohammed is lucky that he lives to write his story. His friend, Dele Giwa, was not that lucky; he died before his time.

Giwa’s author-friend has ample space for an interrogation of the nagging question: Who killed Dele Giwa? He asks that question and raises posers which only he, Ray Ekpu and Dan Agbese could raise. Then he provides insights. Was Newswatch doing a story on a certain Gloria Okon? Who really was she? Yakubu’s book answers the questions in a manner that may activate many more people to write their own books or update existing ones on the case.

Given the stories we’ve read on their bitter-sweet relationship, I expected to see David Mark and M.K.O Abiola appearing in the same sentence or paragraph; I couldn’t find that in the book. But there are several MKO surprises that should extract gasps from the reader. Imagine Abiola as a reporter pursuing a story with his editor in the dead of the night. As editor of Abiola’s National Concord, Yakubu Mohammed says “one night, I was going to meet a news contact in Surulere. He (Abiola) had an idea of the story I was pursuing and he inserted himself into the investigation team. He offered to accompany me. We took off from his residence in my car. Only three of us; he, in the passenger’s seat and I, in the driver’s seat with one security detail at the back seat. We did not return to Ikeja until about 4.00 the following morning, mission accomplished” (Page 168). Accounts of several escapades like this make the book a thriller. Or how should I describe a scene that has billionaire Abiola stranded in a motor park one midnight in Benin? The money man finally got bailed out by the police and on the way to Lagos that night, Abiola entertained his boys in the police car with good music – a fork and a plate supplying the percussion.

When the book is out, readers will confirm that a time there was in Nigeria when a newspaper financed a bank. It is difficult to believe but that is what I read in Yakubu Mohammed’s autobiography. Hear the author: “Abiola’s initial contribution to the establishment of Habib Bank which he co-founded with his friend, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, was paid from the Concord purse. I knew it because I signed the cheque”.” (Page 176).

As Concord journalists, Dele Giwa, Yakubu Mohammed and Ray Ekpu were famous for the unconventional work they did; they were even more famous for the flamboyance of their social life and engagements. They were brilliant, hardworking and rich. They lived big. A columnist with the rival New Nigerian newspaper based in Kaduna went with the pseudonym Candido (someone said he was Malam Mamman Daura). One day, the columnist turned his musket on the trio and called them “the Benzy journalists in Lagos who wear Gucci shoes.”

A journalist, even if an editor, riding a Mercedes Benz in Nigeria of the early 1980s was a big deal. But Yakubu Mohammed does not think it should be a big deal. He has a space for a confirmatory rebuttal of that charge in his book: “That was when the famous Candido column of the New Nigerian, the man behind the mask, who claimed to see all and everything from afar, referred to the trio of Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed as Benzy journalists wearing Gucci shoes. The column did not mean to be offensive but it helped to add something to the amour of our potential detractors. Yes, we were riding Mercedes Benz cars, but we were not the first journalists or editors to do so. I don’t know about Gucci shoes but we were frequent visitors to New Bond Street and Oxford Street, the high-end shopping areas of London. If we were the envy of colleagues, it was thanks largely to (MKO) Abiola’s large-heartedness…” (Page 199).

In the 1970s through early/mid 80s, the Lagos/Ibadan powerhouse of the Nigerian media had “The Three Musketeers.” That was the honorific tag hung on Messrs Felix Adenaike, Peter Ajayi and Olusegun Osoba who were at the helm of the Nigerian Tribune, Daily Times/Daily Sketch, and Nigerian Herald. They were the reigning big boys of that period. Then came the three “Benzy journalists” in imported, expensive shoes. Professor Olatunji Dare in the Foreword to this book drops a positive line on the “quiet elegance” of Yakubu’s wardrobe.

Before their time, a time there was when the Nigerian journalist lived poor and sore. They lived solely for work, booze, cigarettes and sex. The males among them worked hard during the day and retired in the evening to the NUJ Press Centre loosening up into an orgy of excesses. The newsman of that era was a church rat; he commanded neither genuine respect nor genuine pity. The society simply accommodated him as a gesture of tolerance, a necessary evil.

It was a period of derision, a black phase which journalists in other climes also passed through. In the United Kingdom of the 1800s, a Scottish nobleman described journalism as a job fit only for the “thorough-going blackguard.” Blackguard? Check the meaning: someone who behaves in a dishonourable or contemptible way. Sir Walter Scott (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), novelist, poet, and historian, used that description for the newspaper journalist. It would appear that he didn’t really coin the insult. Charles Abbot, who later became Speaker of the British House of Commons, wrote in his diary that he was going to the Cockpit on I9 December I798, then he found the room nearly full of strangers and “blackguard news-writers.”

Again in the same Britain, a certain Thomas Grenville told his brother, Lord Grenville, the Prime Minister, that “his aversion to all editors was such that he had never had and never would have any communication with them.” Thomas Barnes (11 September 1785 – 7 May 1841) was famous and hugely successful as the editor of The Times of London, yet a powerful gentleman could only compliment him as “an insolent, vulgar fellow.” There was Sir Robert Peel, British conservative statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835, 1841–1846), and simultaneously Chancellor of the Exchequer (1834–1835). Before getting into all those big offices, he was Irish Chief Secretary during which time he described Irish journalists as “vile and degraded beings.”

In 1807, the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn made a rule to the effect that no one who had ever been a newspaper journalist should be entitled to be called to the Bar. It took a 23 February 1810 petition to the House of Commons by journalist George Farquharson to defeat that prejudice. Read ‘The Social Status of Journalists at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century’ (1945) by A. Aspinall. It harbours all these UK cases I cited above, and more. Across the borders in Germany, we meet in Arthur Schnitzler’s satiric comedy ‘Fink und Fliederbusch’ (1917) the journalist as essentially “a man without substance and without conviction.’ Statesman and Chancellor of the German Reich, Otto von Bismarck in 1862 was quoted as describing journalism as a “dumping ground for those who had failed to find their calling in life.”

It was as bad in Nigeria. Read Alhaji Ismai’l Babatunde Jose’s ‘Walking Tight Rope: Power Play in Daily Times’ (1987). Read Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s ‘Awo: An Autobiography’ (1960). Chapter 7 of Chief Awolowo’s autobiography is an interesting read on the life of the Nigerian journalist in the 1930s, especially. The very second paragraph of that chapter says journalism “was an unprofitable, frustrating and soul-depressing career at that time in Nigeria.” The third paragraph says “there was a general but inarticulate contempt for newspapermen, particularly, the reporters. They were regarded as the flotsam and jetsam of the growing community of Nigerian intelligentsia: people who took to journalism because they were no good at anything else…” Chief Awolowo joined the Nigerian Daily Times in September 1934 as a reporter-in-training; three months later, he became the newspaper’s resident correspondent in Ibadan. Then he saw journalism in its abject, stark nakedness. He jumped out of it after just eight months. He writes that it was clear to him that he “would never succeed in raising enough money to become a lawyer from the reporting business.” He was in journalism because he needed money to study law.

“That time offer’d sorrow;/ This, general joy”, Shakespeare writes in Henry VIII; Act 4, Scene 1. Every night must yield to the compulsory break of dawn. One of the concluding clauses in Aspinall’s 1945 piece cited earlier above is a reference to John Lord Campbell’s ‘The lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England’ (1848). In it, the author holds that “whereas half a century earlier, newspapers had been in the lowest state of degradation, they were now conducted by men of education and honour.”

Some fifty, forty years ago, debauchery was not a negative word in the life of the average Nigerian journalist. But today, if he has excesses, he does not wear them on his sleeves. This is 2025, almost 100 years after the Awolowo experience with the poverty of the press. As with other professions, the story has changed substantially positively for the Nigerian journalist. If the journalist is the town, he competes competently today with the gown. A contest for intellectual and resource success is ongoing across newsrooms. The Benzy journalists of the 1980s were the pioneers in modern Nigerian journalists becoming entrepreneurs. Today’s journalists learnt from them and are living well. They write great books, do business, make good money and amass wads of certificates. The Nigerian Guild of Editors celebrates new PhDs with the regularity of new arrivals in busy maternity wards. When the Nigerian Tribune clocked 75 last year, a former colleague wrote that the Tribune had more PhDs than some university faculties. That is a fact that has remained very true. Unfortunately, we lost one of us two weeks ago. Dr Leon Usigbe, highly resourceful gentleman, was our Bureau Chief in Abuja. Death took him two Fridays ago and impoverished us. May God repose his soul and look after his family.

Yakubu Mohammed’s autobiography is a bare-it-all history of the journalism of his era. I told him he has written a monumental book: brisk, breezy, smooth and sweet like bitterleaf soup. I asked him when and where the book would be presented to the public, he replied that he did “not have the capacity to do public launching.” I wish it is done the way it should, so that it will turn out the way it normally does.

The media is a long suffering entity. The same with its operatives. When it is out, you will find Yakubu Mohammed’s ‘Beyond Expectations’ a book of tribulations, of a few ups and many downs. It is in there, how people of power use and dump journalists, and how journalists disgracefully undermine journalists for patronage, positions and privileges. You also see and feel accounts of the journalist’s patriotic actions, many times unappreciated by the beneficiary-society. German playwright and novelist, Gustav Freytag, in 1854 published his famous play, ‘Die Jouralisten’ (The Journalists), a comedy in four acts. A voice in that play describes journalists as “worthless fellows, these gentlemen of the quill! Cowardly, malicious, deceitful in their irresponsibility” (Act 3, Scene 1).

At a point in the plot, one of the characters, in utter mockery and despair exclaims: “The evil spirit of journalism has caused all this mischief! The whole world complains of him, yet everyone would like to use him for his own benefit.” Yakubu experienced this many times and it is there in the book. His partner, Dan Agbese, puts this starkly in the Preface: “He expects no rewards and receives none. Some pay him back with the coins of ingratitude. That should make a lesser man bitter but not Yakubu. He takes it in his strides.”

‘They’ asked orò (masquerade) to stop throwing stones, he countered that the one in his hand, what should he do with it? This is a preview, it is not a review and so, I should put a stop to spoilers here. But like orò did, can I take the liberty of my having read the book to drop this last paragraph? In the first paragraph of this piece, I said Abiola was told of the annulment of his election eight years before the June 12 tragedy. How? Yakubu Mohammed writes: “It happened in 1985, not quite one year after I had left Abiola’s Concord. At about 2.00 o’clock after midnight, I was startled out of bed by a dream that left me shaking and sweating. I dreamt that the government conducted a presidential election and MKO Abiola won it fair and square. The country went wild with jubilation. We trooped to the National Stadium where he was scheduled to be crowned. As we all gathered for the ceremony and before the crown could be placed on his head, there was an unprecedented storm that swept the crown off and scattered the crowd away from the arena. The storm thus brought the inauguration ceremony to an abrupt end. Then, I woke up with a start.

The following morning, I began to contemplate how to handle this development. One option was to call MKO and tell him. I demurred because, knowing him very well, I did not want Abiola to regard me as Joseph the dreamer looking for a way to get back to him, having resigned as his editor. I then decided to invite Femi Abbas to my residence. When I asked him if our boss was back in politics, he was taken aback. He then asked: “Where is the politics? You guys succeeded in persuading him out of it and even now the military is in power.” Then I told him about the dream. He promised to do something. But strangely enough, as soon as he stepped out of my house, I had completely forgotten all about the dream. Up to the time the publisher went back into the presidential contest and until the election was annulled; even until Abbas narrated the whole experience in the Sunday Vanguard which I read with absolute amazement and some trepidation, nothing reminded me of the dream. In the article, Abbas recounted my discussion with him way back in 1985, leaving out no details. He revealed all the measures they (he and Abiola) took including prayers in Abiola’s Ikeja residence, followed by another series of prayers in Saudi Arabia and the advice Abiola was given concerning constant prayers to ward off disappointment. He ended his piece with the same conclusion: that it was all divine, something that was destined to happen.”

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

By Prof Mike A. A. Ozekhome, SAN

INTRODUCTION

In a candid interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, Senior British Conservative politician of Nigerian descent Kemi Badenoch, offered a striking and controversial insight into the limitations of Nigerian citizenship law in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. As a woman of Nigerian heritage serving as the UK’s Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Badenoch (formerly known as Olukemi Adegoke and who grew up in Lagos before going to stay in the UK at the age of 16) is no stranger to questions of identity, belonging and migration. But it was her deeply personal revelation and its legal implications that ignited a wave of public conversation not only among Nigerians in diaspora and those resident in Nigeria, but among leading scholars and constitutional analysts, particularly regarding gender equality in Nigeria’s citizenship.

THE INTERVIEW

With clarity and conviction, Badenoch remarked:

“It’s virtually impossible, for example, to get Nigerian citizenship. I have that citizenship by virtue of my parents. I can’t give it to my children because I’m a woman. Yet loads of Nigerians come to the UK and stay for a relatively free period of time, acquire British citizenship. We need to stop being naive.”

Her words, layered both with frustration and insight, and perhaps with political undertones, raise a poignant question: Can a Nigerian woman really not transmit her citizenship to her child as she said? Is Badenoch’s claim supported by the laws of Nigeria, or does it expose a longstanding misreading or worse, a structural gender bias within Nigeria’s legal framework itself?

BROADER CONTEXT: BADENOCH’S ’S BACKGROUND AND POSSIBLE POLITICAL MOTIVES

Kemi Badenoch (45) married with 3 children to Hamish Badenoch (46), (a Scottish banker born in Wimbledon, London), was born in the UK in 1980 to Nigerian Yoruba parents and spent part of her childhood in Nigeria. This automatically makes her a Nigerian citizen by birth under section 25 of the 1999 Constitution. Her wild claim about Nigerian citizenship may have perhaps been driven by a rhetorical device to support her hardline stance on immigration in the UK. By contrasting Nigeria’s supposedly restrictive laws with the UK’s “lenient” policies, she aims to appeal to the sentiments of British voters who are concerned about immigration matters. However, her misrepresentation of Nigerian laws to advance her political career clearly undermines the credibility of her argument and risks perpetuating wrong stereotypes about Nigeria’s legal system and constitutional order.

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION SAYS

Chapter 3 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), provides for citizenship in Nigeria. Every sovereign nation possesses the prerogative to determine the criteria for the acquisition of its citizenship. In the context of Nigeria, Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive legal framework governing citizenship. According to its provisions, Nigerian citizenship may be acquired through three principal modes: by birth, by registration and by naturalization.

CITIZENSHIP BY BIRTH

Citizenship by birth is articulated in Section 25 of the 1999 Constitution which governs the acquisition of citizenship by birth. Section 25(1) stipulates that the following individuals are deemed Nigerian citizens by birth:

(a) any person born in Nigeria before the country’s independence, provided that either of their parents or grandparents belonged to a community indigenous to Nigeria. However, this provision excludes individuals whose parents and grandparents were not born in Nigeria;

(b) any person born in Nigeria after independence, where either of their parents or grandparents is a Nigerian citizen;

(c) any person born outside Nigeria, so long as either of their parents is a Nigerian citizen.

The Constitution defines “the date of independence” as the 1st of October, 1960.

Thus, by implication, citizenship by birth under Nigerian law may be established if:

• both parents are Nigerians;
• either parent is a Nigerian; or
• any grandparent is or was a Nigerian citizen.

This position was affirmed in Shugaba v Minister of Internal Affairs (1981) 1 NCLR, 459, where Justice Oye Adefila held that the deportation of the applicant was unconstitutional. The court emphasized that once an individual establishes Nigerian citizenship under Nigeria’s constitutional provisions, such a person cannot lawfully be deported or expelled from the country. In the decided case of Willie Ogbeide v ArigbeOsula (2004) 12 NWWLR (Pt. 886) 138, Adeniyi, JCA held that:

 “…a citizen of this country by birth never loses his citizenship even when he holds dual citizenship of another country and cannot be disqualified from contesting election into the House of Representatives for reasons only that he holds such dual citizenship.”

BOTH PARENTS CAN LEGALLY PASS CITIZENSHIP TO THEIR CHILDREN

This provision is unequivocal. Both fathers and mothers regardless of gender have the equal legal capacity to pass Nigerian citizenship to children born outside Nigeria. In this regard, Kemi Badenoch’s claim appears, to conflict with the clear text of the Constitution. By virtue of being born to a Nigerian parent, her children are automatic citizens of Nigeria by birth, provided she herself has not formally renounced her own Nigerian citizenship. Importantly, this section does not restrict the transmission of citizenship by birth to the child of a Nigerian father alone. A close reading of Section 25 of the 1999 Constitution reveals that citizenship by birth in Nigeria is grounded in inclusive and non-discriminatory language. The provision declares that individuals born in Nigeria, before or after independence, or born abroad, are citizens by birth if either parent or any grandparent is or was a Nigerian citizen. The deliberate choice of the phrase “either of whose parents” is constitutionally significant. It affirms that both Nigerian fathers and mothers enjoy equal legal standing in passing on citizenship to their children. Section 42(2) of the Constitution provides a broad safeguard against discrimination, stating that:

“No citizen of Nigeria shall be subjected to any disability or deprivation merely by reason of the circumstances of his birth.”

This anti-discrimination provision reinforces the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, parentage, or social class. In Uzoukwu v Ezeonu II (1991) 6 NWLR (Pt. 200) 708, the Court of Appeal provided an authoritative interpretation of Section 42, holding that the section embodies the core values of non-discrimination and equal protection before the law and applies with full force against any policy or law that attempts to disadvantage a citizen on the basis of gender or lineage.

This constitutional position is unambiguous. No distinction is drawn between paternal and maternal lines of descent for the purpose of determining nationality. Consequently, the notion that gender plays a limiting role in the transmission of citizenship at least in the context of citizenship by birth as alleged by Badenoch is not only inaccurate, but also misleading. Such a claim disregards the text of the Constitution and perpetuates an outdated, patriarchal reading of nationality laws that the framers of the 1999 Constitution intentionally rejected.

It is, however, possible that the lived experience of certain individuals (including Kemi) may not align with the constitutional guarantee. Bureaucratic inefficiencies, inconsistent enforcement, or lack of awareness among administrative officers may present obstacles in the practical exercise of citizenship rights particularly for women in cross-national family contexts. But these challenges are procedural rather than legal. They stem from the failure to implement the Constitution faithfully, not from a flaw within the Constitution itself.

IS THE ACQUISITION OF NIGERIAN CITIZENSHIP “VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE”?

Furthermore, Badenoch’s assertion that acquiring Nigerian citizenship is “virtually impossible” raises a separate but equally problematic narrative. While it is true that the process of naturalization or registration may involve stringent requirements, citizenship by birth remains one of the clearest and most secure forms of nationality under Nigerian law. For those with direct descent from Nigerian citizens, the law provides an unequivocal path to recognition. Hence, if a Nigerian woman like Kemi gave birth to children (as she did), whether within or outside Nigeria, such children are constitutionally and automatically entitled to Nigerian citizenship (section 25 of the 1999 Constitution).

In this light, Badenoch’s statement reflects not a legal reality, but rather a possible misinterpretation of Nigeria’s citizenship regime, one that risks reinforcing stereotypes about African and Nigerian legal systems as arbitrary or exclusionary. More importantly, it obscures the modest constitutional progress that Nigeria has made towards embracing gender equality, at least within the letters of the law (though not yet as expected).

Ultimately, the Nigerian Constitution specifically in Section 25 reflects a commitment to non-discrimination and inclusivity in matters of nationality. The real challenge lies not in the law’s intent or wording, but in ensuring that its application is consistent, gender-sensitive, and resistant to political distortions. Public figures, especially those of Nigerian descent occupying high offices abroad, ought to exercise caution and clarity when speaking on constitutional matters. Misstatements, however unintentional, risk entrenching harmful misconceptions that weaken the integrity of legal reforms painstakingly built over decades.

Kemi Badenoch’s assertion during her CNN interview that she cannot pass on Nigerian citizenship to her children because of her gender is therefore clearly contrary to and conflicts with the express language of the Nigerian Constitution. It is not correct.

EXPLORING THE UNDERCURRENTS OF GENDER INEQUALITIES

While Section 25 of the CFRN 1999 clearly empowers both Nigerian fathers and mothers to transmit citizenship to their children born outside Nigeria, thereby rendering Kemi Badenoch’s specific claim legally inaccurate, it would be reductive to end the analysis there.

Indeed, the constitutional safeguard of section 25 of the Constitution against gender-based discrimination has also been firmly reinforced through judicial precedent. In the locus classicus case of Mojekwu v Mojekwu (1997) 7NWLR (Pt 512) 283, the Court of Appeal struck down the Olu-Ekpe custom of Nnewi in Anambra State, which denied female children the right to inherit property of deceased parents. The court held that such a practice was repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience, and therefore incompatible with the values enshrined in the Constitution. Justice Niki Tobi, delivering the lead judgement, emphasized that customs or norms that discriminate on the basis of sex cannot stand in the face of constitutional protections. Though the Mojekwu case concerned with inheritance rights, its broader constitutional significance lies in its clear rejection of gender-based disability in any form. It affirms the principle that no citizen, male or female, should be denied access to certain rights or privileges simply on account of their sex, whether under customary law or through statutory interpretation.

CITIZENSHIP BY REGISTRATION

Kemi’s sentiment, though misplaced under Section 25, may in fact reflect a broader and valid concern, one rooted in the gendered inequities enshrined in other parts of Nigeria’s citizenship laws, particularly section 26. Of the same 1999 Constitution. Under section 26 of the Constitution, a person may acquire Nigerian citizenship by registration, but this provision is strikingly asymmetric. Specifically, Section 26(2)(a) provides that any woman who is or has been married to a Nigerian man may be registered as a citizen of Nigeria, subject to satisfying the conditions prescribed by law. However, there is no corresponding provision for foreign men married to Nigerian women to be registered as citizens of Nigeria. For example, Mr. Hamish Badenoch cannot simply be registered as a Nigerian citizen like his female counterpart married to a Nigerian man. This is clearly inconsistent with the provisions of section 42 CFRN 1999 which establishes the right of every        Nigerian citizen to freedom from discrimination.

Thus, while section 25 recognizes gender equality, Section 26 re-entrenches gender disparity. A person may apply for Nigerian citizenship by registration if:

• 
  – They are of good character and have shown a clear intention to be domiciled in Nigeria.
  – They are married to a Nigerian citizen (typically applicable to foreign women married to Nigerian men).
  – The President has the authority to register such persons as citizens, subject to conditions set by the National Assembly.
  
  

This section allows a non-Nigerian woman married to a Nigerian man to apply for citizenship by registration. Specifically:

• Section 26(2)(a): “a woman who is or has been married to a citizen of Nigeria.”

This gender-specific language has been widely criticized for being discriminatory. Notably:

• It only grants registration rights to foreign women married to Nigerian men, not to foreign men married to Nigerian women.
  • A Nigerian woman cannot register her foreign husband for Nigerian citizenship in the same way a Nigerian man can register his foreign wife.

This supports the implication behind Badenoch’s claim: gender-based limitations exist, particularly in the transmission of derivative citizenship through marriage.

This constitutional inconsistency has therefore been the subject of sustained advocacy by civil society groups and legal scholars (including my humble self), many of whom argue that it violates Nigeria’s obligations under international human rights instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, both of which Nigeria has ratified

The silence of equality in section 26 of the 1999 Constitution is not just a technical oversight; it institutionalizes gender discrimination, effectively excluding Nigerian women from passing nationality to their foreign spouses, a right fully available to their Nigerian male counterparts. The discriminatory implication is that Nigerian women’s citizenship is seen as inferior or incapable of being transmitted, while Nigerian men’s citizenship is presumptively stronger and transmissible.

Political correctness aside, it is this historical and constitutional bias that may perhaps have partly framed Badenoch’s broader frustration. If a Nigerian woman’s spouse cannot be recognized as a citizen through marriage, and the process of transmitting citizenship to children is often hampered by bureaucratic inertia or patriarchal assumptions, then it becomes easier to see why she may feel disempowered, even in contradiction to the express language of Section 25 which makes her children automatic citizens of Nigeria.

COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Many countries have moved to gender-neutral citizenship laws, including:

• Ghana, where both men and women can confer nationality to their spouses and children;
  • South Africa, which enshrines non-discrimination and has a rights-based citizenship framework;
  • Canada, UK, and most of the West, where nationality is conferred equally by either parent.

Nigeria’s colonial-era laws and post-independence constitution still reflect patriarchal biases, which now clash with modern principles of gender equality.

CITIZENSHIP BY NATURALIZATION – SECTION 27

This is open to any non-Nigerian adult who satisfies the following criteria:

          •        Has resided in Nigeria for at least 15 years;

          •        Is of good character;

          •        Has made or is capable of making useful contributions to Nigeria;

          •        Is familiar with Nigerian customs and language;

          •        Intends to reside in Nigeria.

Naturalization is not tied to gender or marriage, but is subject to executive discretion by the President of Nigeria. Invariably, women are at the receiving end as they do not receive equal treatment with the men.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REFORMS

1. Amend Section 26 to allow either a Nigerian man or woman to register a foreign spouse.
   1. Clarify and enforce Section 25 to ensure that children born to either Nigerian parent—regardless of gender—have equal access to citizenship by birth.
   1. Review and harmonize immigration regulations with constitutional provisions and Nigeria’s international obligations.
   1. Launch a diaspora citizenship policy to ease the process for second- and third-generation Nigerians abroad.
   1. Educate consular officials to implement a gender-neutral interpretation of the law.

CONCLUSION

Kemi Badenoch’s statement that she cannot pass Nigerian citizenship to her children because she is a woman, though legally inaccurate under Section 25 of the 1999 Constitution, opens up an important and necessary conversation. The Constitution clearly provides that citizenship by birth can be transmitted through either parent, whether mother or father, regardless of where the child is born. Consequently, if Badenoch holds Nigerian citizenship and has not renounced it, her children are indeed Nigerian citizens by birth.

However, her remarks (though maybe politically expedient, having regard to her past negative statements about Nigeria) reflect a deeper frustration that is not entirely unfounded. While Section 25 affirms gender equality in theory, other provisions particularly Section 26, which governs citizenship by registration expose persistent gender biases in Nigeria’s nationality laws. The exclusion of foreign men married to Nigerian women from the registration pathway to citizenship demonstrates a clear constitutional imbalance. This asymmetry not only reinforces patriarchal assumptions but also undermines Nigeria’s commitment to international human rights obligations.

Badenoch’s experience, viewed through this lens, underscores the dissonance between constitutional promises and practical enforcement, especially for Nigerian women in the diaspora. It illustrates how systemic, bureaucratic and cultural barriers often prevent women from fully exercising the rights that the Constitution guarantees them.

In sum, while the law on its face protects the right of women to pass on citizenship, the structure around it does not always support or respect that equality. Kemi’s statement, though flawed in legal substance, serves as a catalyst for broader reflection and reforms; a reminder that constitutional rights must be matched with equal access, unbiased implementation and an unambiguous commitment to gender justice in law and in practice. Nigerian women, whether resident in Nigeria or in the diaspora, must be accorded equal rights, gender equity and equality within the Nigerian space. They remain our daughters, sisters and mothers.

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

By Abdul Mahmud

One month ago, in Abuja, a small circle of friends, literary enthusiasts, human rights activists, politicians, public intellectuals and thinkers gathered to listen to Chidi Odinkalu read from his latest offering, The Selectorate: When Judges Topple the People. It was a private reading, but the ideas Chidi graciously espoused belong in the public domain. They concern us, citizens of this ruined Republic.

Odinkalu is no stranger to judicial criticism. I have often described him both as a restless ruffler of the judicial nest and a flamethrower who scorches the dark recesses of our judicial quarters, casting light into corners long hidden from public view, so that citizens may, if only for a moment, glimpse the shadows that dwell within. Rightly so. He has spent the better part of his sterling career in the academe and public activism, exposing the inconsistencies, betrayals, and quiet capitulations of the judicial branch. But The Selectorate is more than a critique. It is a mirror, held up to a country whose judicial branch is in utter disrepute.

Odinkalu’s rendering is consistent with the Selectorate Theory popularised by Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph Siverson, and James Morrow in their landmark book, The Logic of Political Survival. They divide society into three groups: the nominal selectorate (everyone with formal rights to choose leaders), the real selectorate (those who actually vote or participate), and the essentials – the critical few without whom no leader can hold power.

In functioning democracies, the “essentials” are usually the voting public. In our case, Odinkalu argues that the courts have quietly taken over that role. The judges, especially those presiding over electoral disputes, now determine who governs. Not the people. This shift means power is no longer derived from the consent of the governed but from the decisions of judges that often defy logic or law. Judges have become kings who sit on imperial thrones where they measure justice by the Shekels. 

Odinkalu lays out his arguments methodically. 

He does not scream. He squares the bull’s eye and scores it well, without being vindictive. He lays accusations where he needs to. He illustrates. Case after case, election after election, state after state, he shows how the judicial branch transformed itself into a class of The Selectorate. Judges now act both as kings and kingmakers. They wield more influence than ballots. They decide contests that citizens thought they had settled at the polling units. He advances the reason, among other reasons, for this, or to put it more simply, he provides an account for the state of affairs, concluding: “This combination of factors was well suited to inspire the onset of a new trend in the cultivation of clientelist relationships between politicians and judicial officers underpinned by bargains, both implicit and sometimes explicit”.

Odinkalu’s position is not founded on legal abstractions. He excavates the upper crust of judicial adjudication with the dexterity of the Foucauldian archaeologist, seeking to uncover what lies beneath the surface of mere observations, thereby exposing bargains hidden by client relations. 

What he exposes presents itself as the real, clear, present and growing danger to our democracy. But, there’s a point about hegemony and power to be made here, a point that he didn’t allude to, which underpin his arguments. The Italian scholar, Antonio Gramsci, argued in his Prison Notebooks that power can be seized, constructed, and sustained through the subtle architecture of hegemony. He showed that ruling classes rule by force and also by manufacturing consent to legitimise its authority. Once power is seized, it does not serve the common good, but answers only to those who possess and perpetuate it through dubious means, as the Selectorate Theory explains. The danger, again, is that the moral foundations of the state are hollowed out and the institutions of justice are reduced to performances for the powerful. It is through these dubious performances for the powerful that judicial hegemons have taken our country’s democracy. 

Drawing from political science, constitutional law, and Nigeria’s political history, Odinkalu makes a powerful case for restraining the judicial branch instead of exalting it. His critique is interdisciplinary, and there lies its strength. He does not merely point out errors of law; he explains how those errors consolidate power in the hands of a few, and how that consolidation hollows out our Republic. He tells the truth many dare not whisper: that judges now select councillors, chairmen, governors, senators, representatives and presidents. Nigeria’s citizens have been turned into mere subjects without the power to decide who represents them. Simply put, they have become a formality in the democratic rituals. They queue in the sun to vote, but the real verdict emerges later from obsequious courts and decisions delivered by judges who do not “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly”, as Prophet Micah expressed in the Holy Book.

Odinkalu’s work strikes at the core of Nigeria’s political dysfunction. It speaks to the question of legitimacy. A government chosen by judicial fiat is not a government of the people; It is a government of the court. He is not the first to observe this, but he may be the first to frame it so sharply and so brilliantly. By situating his analysis in the Selectorate Theory, he shows that the problem is not only corruption or incompetence. It is also structural and systemic. It is also about how political actors engineer political survival in Nigeria through the manipulation of legal instruments by counting judges among their favourites. In this way, the judges have also transformed themselves from kingmakers into kings. 

This is not an attack on the judicial branch. It is a call to conscience. Judges are meant to be neutral arbiters. In Odinkalu’s offering, too many have become embedded in the arena of electoral conflict.  They do not interpret the rules; they change them and enter fudged scores on results’ sheets. They act as though democracy begins and ends in their courtrooms. While inside the arena of conflict, their roles aren’t about reviewing the actions of burglars of elections; it is simply about taking sides with election bandits and extending the geography of banditry and the boundaries of judicial conquest.

Odinkalu highlights the notion of “judicial essentials”: those judges whose decisions determine whether a political actor rises or falls. In a country where elections are frequently flawed and where the process is often tainted by violence and rigging, it is easy for judges to claim the role of final referee. But what happens when that referee takes sides? Odinkalu answers this with clarity.

Democracy collapses not with the squeal of “Fellow Nigerians”, martial music, and the bang of a coup, but with the gavel of a judge. Quietly. Slowly. Fatally. He does not argue that all judges are corrupt. Rather, he shows how a politicised judicial process invites corruption. When judges are seen as gatekeepers to power, the temptation to influence them becomes overwhelming. The judiciary, once the last hope of the common man, has become a marketplace of elite bargains.

There are those who will say Odinkalu exaggerates, but the evidence says otherwise. He documents cases in which politicians whose names were not on the ballot ended up being our representatives – with help from the courts, of course. He documents cases in which political careers were extinguished, not by voters, but by panels of judges whose decisions stretched the limits of interpretation. Some of these rulings contradicted precedents. Others ignored the evidence. All of them had political consequences.

What makes The Selectorate compelling is that it does not end in despair. Odinkalu offers suggestions. He calls for transparency in the appointment and disciplinary processes for judges. He urges the Bar to be more assertive in defending judicial integrity. He wants the public to demand better. Most of all, he believes the judiciary must return to its proper role: interpreting the will of the people, not supplanting it. And the citizens must be at the heart of electoral disputes, as parties. It’s a tough ask in a country where institutions are routinely hijacked. But it is necessary.

As I listened to him read that Saturday, I was struck by his calm tone. There was no bitterness. Only resolve. He has written this book not to condemn, but to warn compatriots. He asks citizens to reckon with what the country has become and to confront how that becoming has trumped electoral justice. What was once a noble exercise of the power of choice at the ballot box has, in his offering, turned into absurdity. Here, power is no longer secured through the choices of citizens at the ballot box, but through the meticulous choreography of legal arguments staged not for the people, but for those robed in black who now hold the final say. The will of the electorate has been displaced by shenanigans, which play out in courtrooms that have become the true closets of judicial corruption. Ours is a democracy where the people vote, but the judges choose.

It is easy to look away; and easier still to rationalise. But the consequences are already here. Disillusionment. Voter apathy. Cynicism. When citizens no longer believe their votes count, democracy dies. Odinkalu is urging them to fight back; not with violence, but with vigilance. Not with slogans, but with civic courage. The judicial branch is vital. Its independence must be protected. But that independence is meaningless if it is used to serve power instead of the citizens. 

The Selectorate is not just a book about judges. It is about us: our passivity, our complicity, and our silence. It urges us to look at the judicial branch and ask, “Whose interests does it now serve?” In that question lies our fate, our country’s fate and the fate of democracy.

A lawyer and a writer, Abdul Mahmud is President, Public Interest Lawyers League (PILL)

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