By Lasisi Olagunju

The United Arab Emirates has just held its Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. Our president was there. A part of that event was the World Future Energy Summit which ended on Thursday last week. Saudi Arabia is holding a Smart City and Infrastructure Expo in September this year. It held one last year. When Muslim countries do things as these, they advertise Islam in the very best form. They make Islam attractive and beautiful.

Like Saudi Arabia, we have Islam here in abundance but we lack the sanity and prosperity of Saudi Arabia. Like the Western World, we have Christianity but the technological fruit of that faith eludes us. Saudi Arabia is busy building smart cities. It is working on NEOM, a $1.5 trillion digital city that is designed to make Dubai an ancient experience. The name NEOM is a blend of the Greek ‘neo’ (new) and the ‘M’ in the Arabic ‘Mustaqbal’ (future). The anglicized NEOM means ‘New Future’. The name tells the fecundity of the minds that conceived the idea. Saudi is building another wonder called Riyadh Smart City; and a third one christened Jedda Economic City. All these are being programmed to run on the most modern of science and tech ideas. To them, book is not haram; it is tonic that gives life. While they talk of Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence; we loot and burn libraries here; we break bones over who becomes an oba or an emir and who should not – in a democratic republic.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are monarchies, yet they are modern in ways that challenge and shame our democracy. The Arabs use religion to make for themselves everything that makes the future a better experience than what today offers. Here in Nigeria, we pray for miracles. Life expectancy “refers to the number of years a person can expect to live.” The Vatican City has been the Centre of Christianity since the 4th century. Life expectancy in that city in 2024 was 84.16 years; in Saudi Arabia, it was 75.83 years; in UAE, it was 78.60. There is another Arab country called Qatar; life expectancy there in 2024 was 80.88 years. Like the Vatican City, Nigeria has Christianity in great abundance, just as it has a surplus of Islam like the Arab countries; yet, the number of years a person could expect to live in Nigeria in 2024 did not exceed 62.2 years.

Our president was at the UAE event. He must have seen the Muslim Arab country using 21st century brains to power its leap into the future. The rich who rode Rolls Royce there last year still ride their wonder on wheels. There are no fears of a government policy that will reduce them to jalopy drivers this year. The state won’t also fleece the poor to feed the rich. That country and others in its league leverage the best in technology to create hubs of innovative solutions to existential issues. Saudi streets are clean; its people are happy and resourceful. Yet, it is not a democracy and has no plan to be one. The UAE has the iconic Dubai as its poster of excellence. The country does not waste its time voting the worst to rule the best. Both countries are Islamic countries, but they do not breed Almajirai, Boko Haram and other variants of extremism that make lepers of their region and religion.

We cannot become those countries until we have blind laws that recognize no class, no ethnicity. We need schools, not temples of miracles. Saudi is a praying nation like us. Unlike us, Saudi Arabia does not insult God with laid-back demands. Saudi Arabia’s top universities are world class. Check their ranking; check ours. Everything that makes a nation fail itself is here. What we have here can only breed enlightened ignorance and unremitting want.

Saudi Arabia is attracting the best brains from all over the world to its universities. And the universities are not there as mere salary-paying loss centres. They are at the forefront of the country’s agenda for its emerging quantum revolution. What do we have in Nigeria?

At the last convocation of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, the institution’s pro-chancellor, Professor Siyan Oyeweso, delivered a withering verdict on the state of the Nigerian ivory tower. He said “the Nigerian university system has been replaced with ‘indigenized’ and ‘villagized’ universities. The hitherto national and international character of the system has been replaced with inbreeding. The staff profiles of federal and state universities – academic and non-teaching – reveal a shocking practice of father, mother, brothers, sisters and children working in the same system. Family dynasty has replaced the merit system.” Damn!

I connect very well with what Professor Oyeweso said. As an undergraduate, we had teachers from all over the world. There were foreign students just as children of the rich and the poor shared seats in lecture rooms. My university classroom experience was a lesson in classlessness. I shared the same class with an Akinrinade in an era when General Alani Akinrinade was one of the biggest names in the country. There was a Soyinka in my class. Governor Oladayo Popoola’s law-student daughter offered some courses that I also wrote in the same class. Yet, our Tigris and Euphrates flowed their courses in amity. The class that existed was the class of learning.

Today, when we tell our 1980s stories and the ones our fathers told us of the 1950s and 1960s, they mean very little – or naked nothing, to our children who have had zero positive contact with the Nigerian state. The mix of experience and status we enjoyed is missing today. Decay in public schools has driven the privileged abroad, or to private schools. The height of parents now determines how high the children can fly. Those stuck in public schools are daily plotting their escape. We cannot be well without casting down our castles of decay.

Despite their advancement in everything, the Arab world is still combing the world for more knowledge. Even our unusual country has been a destination for them. A delegation of the Association of Arab Universities was at the Arabic and Islamic Centre, Markaz, Agege, Lagos last week. Reports said they inspected the impressive digital technology and language laboratory, ICT Centre of the school. Why were they here? If you asked them, they would tell you that seeking knowledge anywhere is an obligation in their religion.

The black man wasted all the centuries of the past. We’ve wasted a quarter of the current century. The Renaissance of the 14th century influenced the Reformation of the 16th century. Both were the shock treatment that jolted the West out of its illiteracy and general backwardness. We need local versions of those two experiences to force a change here. We do not have the time.

A tiny country called UAE built adorable Dubai from a desert fishing village. Our president was there. We wait for the fruits of that visit. Saudi Arabia is using the fruits of Islam to build smart cities. We flock there for worship, business and leisure. Countries that emerged from the rubble of imperial Rome used Christianity to build the Western economies that continue to water our world. Here, we are using religion to cheat, to kill and plunder and cause confusion. The science that made Saudi and Dubai possible is sin to some mis-taught people. Our aspiration is not to gain the success of Saudi; we cannot build Dubai; we are far from where the West is, but we love the beauty of those places. Who really are we?

By Lasisi Olagunju

Some 15 years ago, millions of poor Nigerians were conned into borrowing to buy bank shares. I was one of them. I had no one to pull my ears and tell me that I needed to be educated first before seeking to hoe that farm of thorns. Records still say I am a shareholder of some banks, including First Bank. But that is where it ends. It has been sweat without sweet – which is why I amuse myself showing stupid interest in intrigues among big men who run big banks. One current case is about First Bank board where a civil war is ongoing. Some members are demanding an Extraordinary General Meeting of shareholders – and I am supposed to be part of that ‘general meeting’. A friend who understands boardroom politics told me that the demand for that extraordinary meeting waved an extraordinary red flag at whoever it is targeted at.

Imperial Rome experienced Julius Caesar and turned his surname, Caesar, to the title for their emperors. The world copied them. The Germans say Caesar is Kaiser; the Greek say it is Kaisar; to Russians and other Slavic people, Caesar is Tsar. All the variants mean ‘Emperor’ and that is what bank boards and their chairmen are in Nigeria. No bank in 2025 should be anyone’s piggy bank with a Tzar or Tzars pointing and taking. That is what boards exist to prevent, to protect the interest of shareholders. This has, however, repeatedly turned out a textbook joke – a lie. If it were not a joke, I would have written here that a divided board is a threat to shareholders’ interest – and to the company. I will say that the division in the board of First Bank should get stakeholders curious. Why are they fighting? Some board members are crying wolf because there is actually a wolf – a lone wolf rumbling the jungle. But, if I were one of those crying directors, I would first reassess my own palms and wipe off whatever dirt is there so that my cries would enjoy respect. Equity loves cleanliness. You cannot come to equity with unclean hands. I doubt if there is a saint in that haven.

First Bank has a yet-to-be-concluded Rights Issue. All of us, poor shareholders, were invited to participate in that gamble of investment. Hundreds of thousands took the offer and paid. They have not heard the final answer from those who hold the yam and the knife. Now, suddenly, there are talks about a Private Placement, and it is very contentious. My books and my dictionary are my business administration teachers. They tell me that Private Placement means “sale of stocks directly to a private investor rather than as part of a public offering.” So, I join those who are asking: Who is the private investor for the private placement and why that person? I ask because I hold some shares of First Bank and they were bought with money from the brow. Besides, in the context of what we are discussing, how does this Private Placement collocate with the recent Rights Issue by the same company? I am obviously too illiterate to understand the ways of big men.

Metaphors and proverbs give soft landings to bad falls. I love telling the story of this special creature called chameleon. We all know how ‘very big’ the chameleon is. The Yoruba asked the chameleon why it walks so carefully, gingerly; it answers that it walks carefully because it is afraid that the ground may cave in under its weight. If I were the chairman of First Bank, Mr. Femi Otedola, I would walk the boardroom floors of that bank like that creature. As I did that, I would not do what the chairman before me did that fired him. I would strictly use the rules to get all debtors to pay their debts; I would get depositors’ funds kept safe from those who are addicted to paddy paddy schemes and loans – without stepping on rules. I would do all those and would tinker with whatever is in my style that is rippling the waters. I would seek to get everyone back to my back so that at the end of my tenure, I would leave a safer, more firmly replanted, retooled, and recapitalized bank. I would take every step in strict adherence to the rules of corporate governance. I would tell myself that a coach that pulls out every smoky wood in his fire won’t cook a victory.

Every day, everywhere, I meet several people with sentimental attachments to First Bank. Unlike me, they have no shares there but they insist “it is ours.” They say it is a legacy bank; they say it is too much ours, and too strategic to succumb to self-inflicted injuries. I agree with them. This thing is like a Premier League football team. When the club is governed well, the players will play well, the team wins and no one counts the cost of unnecessary injuries. There is wisdom in seeking peace with, and engaging, those opposed to your ways. The chairman is not the board; the rules say he is not. And he must not seek to be what he should not be. If I sat on that chair, I wouldn’t be seen fighting too many wars at the same time.

BY Prof Mike Ozekhome, SAN, CON, OFR, LL.D

1. INTRODUCTION

My chambers makes this intervention  in the public domain as Solicitors to Diezani Alison-Madueke ( DAM ),the former Honourable Minister of Petroleum Resources (HMPR). As her Solicitors, we are fully versed in and conversant with her present ordeal and the entire facts surrounding her matters both here in Nigeria and abroad. So, we write from the vantage position of one that is aware of the cocktail of lies that have been spurned around her cases in the last ten years. Many of the narratives are outrightly false; some others sheer outlandish speculations; and most, simply bizzare stories cooked up by her traducers to extract a Shylock’s pound of flesh from her for reasons she does not know and cannot even fathom. This intervention therefore seeks to correct this skewed narrative and set the records straight for purposes of history. Many Nigerians often talk about wanting ‘technocrats’ to be involved in governance. They desire that people with character and integrity should join politics. We agree with them. However and regrettably too, now and again and many a time, the same people not only allow, but  but actually join the bandwagon to mob-lynch those who chose to serve the nation. And we often do this insidiously, covertly and overtly, even when there is no concrete or even any iota of proof that such public officers ever abused their offices or stole from public coffers. It is therefore surprising and of great concern to us, to see the level of sustained vilification of an innocent Nigerian citizen who has not yet been tried and found guilty of any offence known to law by any court of law whether in Nigeria or abroad. The person at the receiving end is Citizen Diezani Alison-Madueke (“DAM”).

2. THE GALACTICA YACHT AND THE FALSE NARRATIVE

We note with concern the recent deliberate attempt to link her with what has been described as a civil forfeiture of a yacht Galactica, the sale of which was said to have yielded $52.8m to the US government; which sum has since been repatriated to Nigeria. This is a clear example of the mischievous and cruel sport of tarnishing the image of the lady through a bouquet of consistent, persistent and unrelenting cocktail of falsehoods and misinformation. The purveyors of this line of misinformation term it “name-and-shame”. To sell the storyline, the architects ensured they attached Diezani’s name to a recovered yacht which is not in any way linked to her. They now falsely termed it “Diezani loot”. Nothing of the sort ever happened. She was never involved in the purchase, use and sale of the said yacht. The yacht Galactica, from information readily available in the public domain and in open sources, was purchased by Mr Kola Aluko who had used the vessel until he agreed to its forfeiture to the United States of America. The yacht Galactica was neither owned nor ever used by our client. DAM has in fact never set her eyes on the yacht. Kola Aluko is an experienced businessman who had been in business well before DAM came into office as HMPR. The only tenuous basis for deliberately linking DAM to the said yacht is the false narrative that the Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) which were entered into between Kola Aluko & Jide Omokore’s Atlantic Energy companies and NNPC, were allegedly corruptly awarded to the said companies by DAM. DAM was not the GMD of the NNPC as so did not and could not have awarded the said contracts.

3. THE GALACTICA YACHT SPIN AND THE ALLEGED CORRUPT AWARD OF THE CONTRACT HAS ALREADY BEEN DEBUNKED BY A COMPETENT COURT OF LAW IN NIGERIA.

The fallacy of DAM’s involvement in an alleged corrupt contract which gave birth to proceeds with which the Galactica was supposedly purchased has long been debunked and laid to rest by a Nigerian competent court of law in Charge No. FHC/ABJ/CR/121/2016: Federal Republic of Nigeria vs Olajide Omokore & Others.In that case, the Federal High Court, coram Hon.Justice Nnamdi Dimgba (now of the Court of Appeal), held that the Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) between NNPC and the Atlantic Companies were validly entered into between the said companies and the NNPC.  Furthermore, the said companies and their chairman were discharged and acquitted of any offence howsoever in relation to allegedly obtaining the contract or monies realized from it through false representations. They were also exonerated and freed of the offence of money laundering in relation to the said contracts with which they were also charged.The judgement in the case clearly established that the said contracts were properly awarded by NNPC and that the said award followed due process.

To characterize such a forfeiture of a yacht allegedly bought with proceeds of the valid contracts as being linked to DAM simply on account of the legitimate SAAs, which have since been adjudged and held by the court to have been validly entered into between the NNPC and the said companies, is completely preposterous, if not outrightly bizzare.

4. DAM WAS NEVER A PARTY TO THE SAAs

Even at that, DAM was never a party to the contract process or contract negotiations, or contract selection for the award of the Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) between the NNPC and Atlantic Energy Ltd. That contract process, like all others before and after it, was handled solely by the NNPC which followed its usual contract award due process to the letter. It did not involve DAM in any way or manner.

There was therefore nothing untoward, opaque or illegal whatsoever and howsoever about the SAA award process. As a matter of fact, the terms of the Atlantic Energy SAAs were made even more stringent for the Atlantic companies and constituted a much better deal for Nigeria than the SSAs which were entered into a few years earlier between the NNPC and the ENI-AGIP Multinational.

5. DAM MERELY ACTED AND DISCHARGED HER DUTIES WITHIN HER STATUTORY RESPONSIBILITIES

It was our client’s statutory duty as the HMPR at the final stage of any contract process, to make final signatory and approval on behalf of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources (MPR). However, NNPC would, as always, have first vetted and carried out all due diligence which include necessary operational and contractual checks and procedures. That would not have involved and did not infact did not involve DAM as the HMPR.

In line with due process and as statutorily required, DAM merely appended her signature to the final approval request letter which was forwarded to the office of the HMPR by the GMD, NNPC. As due process had already been observed and followed, the SAAs were signed off by her as required of her by law. DAM in the usual course of her duties did exactly the same thing every month for each of the hundreds of contracts that she had to sign-off on without any preferential treatment. And that is because it was an integral part of her statutory responsibilities as HMPR. DAM thus merely followed due process to the letter. She never engaged in the operational process of negotiating those contracts as this process was entirely and without exception, within the remit of the NNPC which was an independent entity from her office as HMPR.

6. DAM WAS NOT INVOLVED IN THE NON-PAYMENT OF CASH CALLS

Let us be very clear about this: the issues of non-payment of the cash-calls that subsequently arose in the Atlantic Energy SAAs had nothing whatsoever to do with the initial contract award which followed due process and was properly made. Those issues arose as a direct result of the manner of operational implementation and supervision and had nothing whatsoever to do with DAM. She was never involved in any way or manner. As a matter of fact in April 2014, as soon as she was brought to her attention by an external multinational head that there were some issues regarding the Atlantic Energy SAAs, she immediately took strong and direct action by promptly alerting Mr. President, the Permanent Secretary (PS), of MPR and the GMD-NNPC, in writing, and directed that an immediate two-week investigation be carried out. Following the resulting investigative report, DAM again directed in writing to the PS, MPR and the GMD-NNPC, with Mr. President’s knowledge and approval, that a process for the recovery of the unpaid cash-call be immediately put in place.

7. DAM NEVER SOLD OFF OIL BLOCKS CONTAINED IN THE SAAs

It must therefore be emphasized that although a portion of the media severally unfairly vilified and accused DAM of purportedly selling off the oil blocks contained in the SAAs to Atlantic Energy, she never gave such a directive or approval.

8. EARLIER WILD ALLEGATIONS AND THE PET PHRASE, “DIEZANI-LOOT”

This is not the first time this genre of outlandish allegations have been levelled against DAM. Sometime ago, she was widely but falsely accused of owning a diamond-studded bikini underwear allegedly valued at $12,000,000!. Incredible!! The allegation was so unnatural, wild and baseless that the then Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, was compelled to publicly deny and denounce the vile allegation as being not only false, but preposterous. Similarly, when certain people were accused of bribing INEC officials, the bribe sums  were unjustifiably linked to DAM and labelled, as is always mischievously done, ‘Diezani-loot’. Yet, all that she did was to merely coordinate the raising of campaign funds for the then ruling political party that controlled the government she served under at that material time. She readily handed over the raised funds to the party which then determined how the said funds were disbursed without involving her. She was not in any way a beneficiary of the funds realized.

9. DAM WAS NAMED IN A CRIMINAL CHARGE WITHOUT ANY LINKAGE WHATSOEVER

DAM was gleefully named many times on the face of a charge filed against Atlantic Energy in Charge No. FHC/ABJ/CR/121/2016: Federal Republic of Nigeria vs Olajide Omokore & Others. In the said charge preferred by the EFCC in respect of an alleged bribing of some INEC officials, DAM was never made a party or Defendant to the said charge such as to enable her defend herself. Yet they mentioned her name severally. She was forced to apply to be joined as a Defendant to the said counts in the charge to enable her clear her name. Surprisingly and curiously, the application for joinder was strangely and fiercely opposed by the same EFCC that filed the charge, leading to the striking out of her name from the said charge sheet.

10. HOW THE WORD “ DIEZANI LOOT” EXCITES MANY, EVEN THOUGH PATENTLY FALSE

In spite of these clear verifiable facts which are available in the public domain, DAM has continued to be the subject of dersion and grave unproven allegations that are demonstrably false and patently ill-motivated. This traducing notwithstanding, the harrowing experience of cancer-related health challenges she has been going through in the last ten years of her life would not allow her a breathing space. It appears that nothing excites the purveyors and peddlers of these orchestrated misinformation and falsehood more than spinning and heaping all forms of false allegations on her, no matter how palpably false, baseless, disingenuous and unbelievable. It satiates their over- bloated egos to tar her with the paintbrush of shame.

11. DAM HAS ALWAYS BEEN UPRIGHT IN THE DISCHARGE OF HER DUTIES

DAM worked conscientiously and discharged her duties diligently to the best of her ability in service to her fatherland. She remains the only Petroleum Minister to have left behind, a staggering sum of over

$4Billion in the NLNG Account representing Gas Sector Investment Funds. She did this to steady the incoming administration of former president, Muhammadu Buhari, at the end of her tenure in May, 2015. She did this in the hope of ensuring continuity in the development of the critical Gas sector). This sum which was saved for the development of the important Gas Sector was summarily spent and disbursed immediately by the Buhari administration upon assumption of office. No one appears interested in this foresight or patriotic inclination.

12. THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF THE POSITION OF HMPR

It should be appreciated by all that DAM’S position as the Federal Minister of Petroleum Resources was an extremely sensitive one that required careful navigation. This is a position which had before then and till now been mostly reserved for and been occupied  by the ruling Presidents of Nigeria in their personal capacities. This position came not only with its burdens, but also with special legitimate privileges which have since formed the linchpin and cornerstone of the underlying sundry accusations levied against her, but without any proof of having committed any offence known to law.

13. DAM HAS BEEN INVESTIGATED FOR 10 YEARS WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE OF CORRUPTION

For the avoidance of doubt, DAM remains the only former minister who has been kept under full focus and investigation in the United Kingdom by the UK authorities, in collaboration with the Nigerian authorities, since 2nd October, 2015. This is almost 10 years ago; and just barely one week after she completed and survived a grueling 8- month serial chemotherapy treatments for Triple Negative breast cancer. During this agonizing time, she went into a coma, escaping death by the whiskers.  It could only have been God at work that is alive today!

14. CONFIRMATION BY THE PAST EFCC CHAIRMAN THAT DAM IS INNOCENT OF THESE VILE ALLEGATIONS

It is of interest to note that on two separate occasions, the immediate past Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, confirmed to DAM’s other lawyers that no funds from the coffers of the Federal Government of Nigeria have been found ever stolen by her; and that no such funds had ever been traced to her.

15. DAM’S TRAVAILS ARE DRIVEN BY WILD SPECULATIONS AND PUBLIC LYNCHING MINDSET

DAM’s travails over these years have been founded solely on baseless and unfounded speculations and allegations which wrongly alleged that she obtained unlawful gifts and favours from operators within the petroleum industry. She had never been accosted or charged with stealing or pilfering government money. These matters of obtaining unlawful gifts and favours are now subject of proceedings against DAM in the United Kingdom.

16. DAM HAS BEEN DEPENDING ONLY ON GOODWILL FOR HER SURVIVAL

It is only recently that DAM was actually charged to court in the UK on the 2nd of October, 2023. She had prior to that date  been held in the UK for a prolonged period of over eight years whilst the UK’s authorities conducted their investigation on her. As she had no work papers, she was not permitted to work to fend for herself. She has not even been permitted to leave the UK since the 2nd of October, 2015, till date. Thus, for nearly ten years, DAM has had to depend for her survival, solely and entirely on the goodwill of a few friends and family members to survive.

17. SALIENT FACTS TO NOTE ABOUT DAM BUT WHICH HER TRADUCERS WILL WANT BURIED

The following facts are worth noting about DAM for the sake of history and posterity:

a. DAM was the most senior black woman ever in the African Oil and Gas Public Sector (between 2010 & 2015).

b. DAM was the first female Executive Director of Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria, in its entire history in Nigeria; a position she did not lobby for. She was identified, recognised and appointed, through her sheer dint of hard work and sense of professionalism by the relevant Global Heads of Shell in the Hague, Netherlands,

c. DAM has so far been the first and only female Petroleum Minister in Nigeria’s history. She never lobbied for this position. She was actually initially nominated without her knowledge.

d. DAM has been the first and only female President of OPEC in the organization’s entire history since its founding in 1960. She also did not lobby for this lofty position.

e. DAM was nominated for and served in various federal ministerial positions under two separate Presidents; positions she never sought nor lobbied for.

OUR PLEA TO ALL

We plead, as her lawyers, with all and sundry that she ge accorded fair hearing and that the process of these UK court proceedings be allowed to take their natural course to avoid prejudice to her in the ongoing subjudice UK proceedings against  her. Those purveyors and peddlers who habitually spin these outrightly false, unfounded, defamatory, unintelligent and indefensible narratives to denigrate and humiliate her should please find better use of their time and leave DAM alone. Let the law take its natural course without interference. We humbly pray.

The unfortunate and, I venture to say, unwise obfuscation of the distinction between the two great branches of our profession (litigation and transactional law) is the principal cause of the most appalling confusion and misapplication of principles for our professional conduct.

We copy almost blindly, sometimes without recourse to the institutional and societal guardrails that insulate the UK and the US from the negative consequences of latter-day forays outside the tested and trusted institutional practices that for centuries have upheld us and sustained the integrity of our judicial process and of our legal system.

Read Also: BOSAN cannot re-write the Rules of Professional Conduct on advertisement

Advertisement might be tolerable for the work of solicitors and for other transactional aspects of our noble profession. It is a totally different and potentially destructive thing for the legal system when courtroom lawyers purport to employ the same thing.

Look at America!
And, except for the larger restraints in England, look at what is slowly also becoming of that most coherent, predictable and respectable jurisdiction.

It’s not every innovation that we should blindly copy!

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Colonial occupation and domination prospered by abducting and liquidating the most vocal Africans. Those whom it drove into exile were lucky. Sir Evelyn Baring invented the manual on this form of predation as governor of colonial Kenya for seven years until 1959. Six decades after independence, the man who rode to power in Nairobi two years ago by promising to make Kenya great again is unapologetically reprising Sir Evelyn’s manual minus the internment camps.

In June 2021, Abubakar Malami, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and Nigeria’s federal Attorney-General, announced with some relish that Nnamdi Kanu – self-proclaimed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) – had been returned to Nigeria after being “intercepted” in an un-named location. Malami had initiated the prosecution of Mr. Kanu in 2015 for treason. In April 2017, the courts granted bail to Kanu. Five months later, he disappeared from public view after soldiers reportedly raided his country home in Abia State in south-east Nigeria leading to scores of fatalities. The following month, he was reportedly sighted in Jerusalem.

The circumstances of Mr. Kanu’s return to Nigeria in 2021 degenerated quickly from mystery to controversy. The International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL), whom Nigeria initially credited with assistance in the “interception”, firmly denied any involvement in the operation.

When he announced the “interception” of Mr. Kanu, Attorney-General Malami claimed that it was accomplished by the “collaborative efforts of Nigerian intelligence and security services.” In October 2022, however, Nigeria’s Court of Appeal found as a fact that Mr. Kanu “was in Kenya, was abducted therefrom and there were no extradition proceedings undertaken prior to his forcible abduction.”

Kenya unconvincingly denied involvement in the abduction. Very importantly, however, the Government of Kenya (GOK) offered no protest against what was clearly a spectacular violation of its sovereignty. The conclusion had to be that the GOK authorized Mr. Kanu’s abduction from its territory. Prior and subsequent conduct by the GOK provide ample evidence to support this.

On 2 February 2018, operatives of Kenya’s security services used explosives to gain entrance into the premises of former student leader and lawyer, Miguna Miguna, from where they abducted him into detention incommunicado. After several days of keeping him out of circulation, they drove Dr. Miguna to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, where they declared him a “prohibited immigrant” and deported him to Canada.

As a prominent student leader during the regime of President Daniel Arap Moi in the 1980s, Miguna was exiled to Canada. From there, he sought several times without success to renew his Kenyan nationality documents. Canada eventually granted him refugee status and he traveled initially under documentation provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees before eventually being forced to acquire Canadian nationality.

Upon returning to Kenya in 2007, Dr. Miguna enrolled as a lawyer, served as senior adviser to the Prime Minister and subsequently ran for high public office. It was not in dispute that both of his parents were Kenyans or that he was Kenyan by birth and by descent. In a decision on 14 December 2018, the High Court of Kenya found that the government of Kenya abducted and deported Dr. Miguna “despite court orders directing that he be produced in court” and lamented the fact that “it is inconceivable that the state can deport its own citizen to a second country without due regard to the constitution and the law.”

William Ruto was Kenya’s Vice-President when Mr. Kanu and Dr. Miguna were abducted. In 2022, he became president.

On 16 November 2024, leading Ugandan opposition politician, Dr. Kiiza Besigye, who was in Nairobi to attend the launch of a book by former Kenyan Justice Minister and senior lawyer, Martha Karua, disappeared. Five days later, he surfaced before a military tribunal in the custody of the Uganda Peoples Defence Force (UPDF) on fanciful charges of illegal possession of firearms. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, expressed shock at “the abduction of Ugandan opposition politician Kizza Besigye on 16 November 2024 in Kenya and his forcible return to Uganda.”

Dr. Besigye’s experience was not the first abduction of Ugandan opposition in Kenya. In July 2024, Kenya’s security services similarly snatched 36 members of Dr. Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) who were in the country for a meeting and expelled them to Uganda into the arms of the UPDF, who promptly charged them with “terrorism” before a military tribunal. The United Nations later expressed concern that President Museveni’s practice in Uganda of charging civilians before military tribunals was “in contravention of the country’s obligations under international human rights law.”

In October 2024, Kenyan authorities similarly abducted seven Turkish refugees and refouled them back to Turkey into the arms of the government that had exiled them.

In the period since the anti-Finance Bill protests in the country between June to December 2024, Kenya’s National Human Rights Commission has reported the abduction and disappearance of at least 82 persons. Some of the abducted have turned up dead. When young people in Nigeria protested two months after their colleagues in Kenya, the Nigerian government decided to borrow a leaf from President Ruto’s playbook.

Back in Nairobi, one of the victims of these abductions by the GOK was Leslie Muturi. His father, Justin Bedan Muturi, happens to be the Cabinet Secretary (Minister) for Public Service in the government President Ruto. Around June 22, 2024, Leslie Muturi was disappeared. At the time, his father, Justin, was the Attorney-General of Kenya and sat in the National Security Council with the Director of National Intelligence Service, Noordin Haji.

In the past week, Justin Muturi has narrated how his effort to locate his son took him through the entrails of the high command of Kenya’s deep state to the presence of his boss, President Ruto, who ordered Noordin Haji to release Leslie. Less than an hour thereafter., Leslie returned to his family.

Justin Muturi’s clinical account of what transpired in the disappearance of his son clearly establishes the culpability of Kenya’s president and security high command under him in resuscitating a culture of state-sponsored abductions redolent of the worst excesses of Sir Evelyn Baring’s colonial era abuses.

After denying culpability last November, President Ruto promised on 28 December 2024 to end the abductions, in effect admitting state complicity. Two days later, the continental human rights body of the African Union expressed “profound alarm over reports of abductions and enforced disappearances in Kenya.”

Less than a fortnight into the New Year, Tanzania’s leading independent journalist, Maria Sarungi Tsehai, survived an abduction from a shopping mall in Nairobi. Ms. Tsehai and her family have been exiled in Kenya for over four years. Maria was lucky. Two years earlier, Kenyan police officers murdered exiled Pakistani journalist, Arshad Sharif, in Nairobi. Despite a court order and appeals by the United Nations, his killers continue to escape accountability.

When they re-established the East African Community in 1999, the original partner states in East Africa – Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda – desired to advance transactional life and spaces in the region. Under current leadership, however, these states are now using regional integration to advance the expendability of African civic and transactional life. They are collaborating across inter-state borders to liquidate critics and perceived enemies and make their lives precarious.

It seems clear that these abductions in Kenya are taking place under the direct command of government or, even more frightening, have been outsourced to non-state actors acting under the authority and protection of the State. The latter may explain the intractable nature of the abductions and the inability of Ruto’s GOK to bring it under control despite the assurances of the President and the escalating diplomatic costs and investment runs.

This was hardly what Kenyans or the rest of Africa hoped for when the people chose President Ruto’s vision of a “hustler” nation over the other options on offer in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election. The only hustle presently taking place under his watch is the hustling of innocent citizens and visitors into enforced disappearance and exile. From the comfort of his grave, Sir Evelyn must feel exceedingly proud of William Ruto.

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