By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In a week in which the Nigerian judiciary at all levels has been the focus of considerable civic and party-political energy, it may seem odd to expend bandwidth on the travails of an investor or businessman, but Ernest Azudialu-Obiejesi is no ordinary businessman. The story of the ongoing ordeal in the Nigerian court system involving him, his wife, Nnenna – an entrepreneur in her own right – and various companies in which they are cross-invested, will for long be studied as an example of how disreputable dispute resolution constrains development and can blight even the ablest.

These cases involve the control of assets running into billions of dollars and claims concerning the structure and enforcement of secured credit transactions whose value is equally mouthwatering. The issues and sums involved are consequential for the fate of Nigeria’s economy. The performance of the courts has been just as consequential but for mostly the wrong reasons.

These cases have worked their way with dutiful relentlessness through every nook and cranny of the Nigerian court system. In the past six months alone, they have traveled through multiple judges of the Federal High Court; up to the Court of Appeal; and then to the Supreme Court from where they have returned to the Federal High Court. These cases have also generated tens of thousands of pages of court filings and records and thousands of billable hours for the most expensive lawyers in Nigeria.

As with many such cases involving commercial transactions at the sharp end, these cases can seem interminable, and their narrative can appear complex. Amidst the fog of legal attrition, however, the plot is discernible. What they reveal about how courts can dissipate a country and its wellbeing bears close attention.

Better known as “Obijackson”, the name of the trading company under which he first made his foray into the Piranha-infested waters of Nigerian enterprise in 1983, Ernest Azudialu-Obiejesi is one of Nigeria’s richest. In 1991, during the heady days of military rule, he ventured beyond trading and founded Nestoil, an engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning company active in the provision of services to the hydrocarbons and adjacent sectors in the country.

Neconde Energy, another company founded by Obijackson, is a leading indigenous operator in hydrocarbons exploration and production in Nigeria. Among other holdings, Neconde Energy owns 45% of Oil Mining Lease (OML) 42. The remaining 55% is owned by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Exploration and Production Limited (NEPL).

These companies are part of the Obijackson Group, which employs over 3,000 Nigerians directly. Up to 15,000 indirect jobs depend on their operations too.

As with many operators in the hydrocarbons and adjacent sectors, it is not unusual for such companies to require lines of credit from financial institutions. Indeed, this can itself be proof of the value and profitability.

In December 2022, the First Bank Group led a syndicate of financial institutions, including 16 Nigerian banks, in restructuring and consolidating the long-term indebtedness of Nestoil into a pool designated as “Global Facilities” and under a document known as Common Terms of Agreement (CTA). The consortium also included some lenders who were non-Nigerian, such as the Africa Export-Import (Afrexim) Bank, headquartered in Cairo.

The CTA contained provisions governing applicable law as well as dispute resolution forum. It appears that the parties agreed that the applicable law will be English law and the forum for resolution of disputes will be England. How or why they made this choice is not in issue at this moment.

Neconde Energy – together with Obijackson and Nnenna Obiejesi – guaranteed this transaction.

Around 22 October 2025, the second anniversary of the onset of his judicial career, Deinde Isaac Dipeolu, a judge of the Federal High Court in Lagos, issued an order at the instance of the FBNQuest Limited, a Merchant Bank, and First Trustees Limited, both members of the First Bank Group, authorizing a receiver/manager appointed by them to take control of the assets of Nestoil and Neconde Energy. The basis was a claim that there had been a default in the debt which crystallized enforcement against the assets on which the debt was secured. Importantly, the order declined to extend judicial protection to the receiver/manager.

The understanding of the creditors appeared to be that those assets included a mini-skyscraper known as Nestoil Tower, located in a choice part of Victoria Island in Nigeria’s commercial capital in Lagos. The occupants of this building include staff of Nestoil and of Neconde Energy. However, the building is owned by another company called Drawcock Estates Limited, which was not party to the Global Facilities or the CTA.

One year earlier, on 8 October 2024, another judge of the Federal High Court, Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa, had apparently issued an order restraining “any persons whatsoever”, from taking such adverse enforcement action against the building. This order was not challenged.

Similarly, prior to the CTA, in 2019, another judge of the same court, Muslim Sule Hassan, had made another order requiring the parties – in a formulation that has now become familiar to Nigerians – to preserve the status quo ante bellum.

It appeared that Deinde Dipeolu had set out to anchor a young judicial career on a distinguished track-record of controversial ex parte orders involving both hydrocarbons interests and bankers. On the last working day of 2024, 30 December, again at the instance of the First Bank Group, he dutifully issued an order freezing the accounts of General Hydrocarbons Ltd in a dispute concerning credit facilities to the operators of OML 120. However, three weeks earlier, his colleague, Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa appeared to have issued an order restraining such action.

Deinde Dipeolu’s order of October 2025 threatened to ransack the life of Nestoil and the Obijackson Group as a going concern. To enforce the order, the Nigeria Police Force deployed to seal Nestoil Tower. Following a petition by Obijackson alleging judicial malpractice, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court transferred the case to another judge of the court, Daniel Osiagor who, on 20 November, vacated Deinde Dipeolu’s ex parte orders. This enabled the company to – temporarily at least – return to its headquarters building.

The First Bank Group filed a notice of appeal on 21 November 2025 against Daniel Osiagor’s decision. On 26 November, unknown to anyone, they followed this up with an application ex parte asking the Court of Appeal to issue a “restorative injunction” returning them to the building and affording judicial protection to the manager/receiver.

At this time and on this day, however, no records of appeal had been prepared or transmitted records to the Court of Appeal. So, there was no appeal before the Court. Mind you, the lower court had declined judicial protection to the receiver/manager. So, there was nothing about that to “restore” either.

Yet, the following day, 27 November, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal sat promptly and, in the absence of an underlying appeal, granted the application for “restorative injunction” without hearing the other side. If anything qualifies as judicial miracle, this was it.

But this Court of Appeal had only just begun its career in judicial miracles.

In the third week of January 2026, they disqualified lawyers instructed by Obijackson and Nnenna Obiejesi, his wife, as well as Neconde Energy, from participating in the proceedings. According to the Court of Appeal, only the receiver/manager (the validity of whose appointment was disputed) could exercise that right. The audacity of this reasoning did not pass the smell test.

On 10 April 2026, the Supreme Court agreed, accusing the Court of Appeal in this case of having “abdicated its judicial responsibility and enabled blatant abuse of process of court when it granted the application.” Stronger judicial condemnation is difficult to imagine.

Now that the Supreme Court has settled the matter of legal representation, the parties must return to the High Court for the underlying dispute. How long this will take or how many more twists of judicial malefaction could accompany the journey to a resolution of the mouthwatering sums involved is anyone’s guess. Investors elsewhere desiring to make Nigeria a destination and looking at this will be forgiven if they were to decide to sit it out or find a more sensible destination.

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

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

By Farooq Kperogi

There is really no opposition in Nigeria in the true sense of the word. There are only politicians who have been temporarily kicked out of the inner sanctum of power and influence but who share no fundamental difference with the current temporary occupants of the power structure. Nonetheless, if all the people vegetating on the margins of the power structure came together, they could easily displace those within it in 2027.

Although the coalition of so-called opposition politicians angling to get back to power in 2027 has not articulated a coherent blueprint to show that it will be different from President Bola Tinubu (I strongly believe they are indistinguishable from him), it can effectively instrumentalise the crying incompetence, in-your-face corruption, ethnic bigotry, insufferable arrogance, unabating misery and insouciance that have become the hallmarks of Tinubu’s administration to convince a traumatised nation that it can offer an alternative.

It doesn’t matter if they will replicate or even exacerbate Tinubu’s unrelieved disaster when they get to power. Even the prospect of temporary relief from Tinubu’s unending torment is enough to get most people to give them a chance. But they have shown that they lack the discipline, cohesion and foresight required to wrest power from Tinubu.

Even before they have had a chance to come together, they are splintered. This became clear in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling that restored David Mark’s leadership of the ADC. Neither Peter Obi nor Rabiu Kwankwaso said a word about it.

There are credible rumours that Obi and Kwankwaso didn’t react to the Supreme Court judgement because they had already moved on. They are said to be heading to the NDC and no longer care about what happens to the ADC.

In other words, we are back to the 2023 factionalisation of the “opposition”. Both Obi and Kwankwaso appear to be allergic to the internal democratic processes of political parties. They want to be canonised as candidates without contest. Since they can’t find that, they are moving away.

Atiku Abubakar may emerge as the candidate of the ADC if the ADC survives, that is. He might choose Rotimi Amaechi as his running mate. Should this happen, the opposition will be fatally fractured, as it was in 2023.

Even now, the verbal darts between Atiku’s supporters and Obi’s and Kwankwaso’s supporters are more caustic and more venomous than the exchanges between either camp and Tinubu’s supporters.

In fact, Tinubu is the net beneficiary of their maximalist posturing and internal warfare. Obi and Kwankwaso supporters say they would rather let Tinubu continue for another four years than support Atiku’s aspiration to replace him. Atiku’s supporters, for their part, say they would rather put up with another Tinubu term than support an Obi/Kwankwaso presidency.

Beyond their crude, petulant name-calling, Obi and Atiku supporters advance arguments in support of their positions, both of which benefit Tinubu. Obi’s supporters say since it isn’t the turn of the North to produce a president, Buhari, having ruled for eight continuous years before Tinubu took over, if another southerner can’t be presented as the opposition’s candidate, they would rather support Tinubu to complete the South’s turn.

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Atiku’s supporters, on the other hand, turn that logic around and say that if Obi is supported to displace Tinubu in 2027, he would “eat into” the North’s turn, which they believe should start in 2031. They don’t believe Obi’s promise to rule for only one term since there is no legally binding or constitutional constraint that would forbid him from reneging on his promise.

There is a precedent for this in Goodluck Jonathan, who was “allowed” to complete Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s term on the understanding that he wouldn’t seek another term in 2011. He not only ran and won in 2011, he ran again in 2015 and almost won.

So, the argument of Atiku’s supporters is that supporting Tinubu to complete his term benefits the North more than supporting Obi because there is certainty, in their reckoning, that power will move to the region without contest after Tinubu’s term. It’s irrelevant if Tinubu’s policies incinerate them before power rotates back to the North.

It isn’t the logic or admissibility of the arguments of both camps that is the issue here. The point at issue is that in fighting each other, the opposition is fighting for Tinubu. His economic strangulation of the masses of our people takes the back seat. The insecurity that is ravaging the country, which he seems either unable or unwilling to confront and stamp out, is rendered irrelevant.

In other words, Tinubu’s most potent weapon isn’t INEC with its partisan chairman or a compromised judiciary. It is the opposition. Interestingly, the two main groups in the opposition like to accuse each other of “working for Tinubu” to ensure that their candidate doesn’t win. The truth is that they are both assets to Tinubu and are working for him for free. They are both weapons fashioned against each other for the benefit of Tinubu.

And that’s why I consider Tinubu’s excessive, underhanded zealousness in suffocating the ADC and other opposition parties from becoming viable platforms to challenge him a self-sabotaging strategic blunder. He could have a clear win, because of the selfishness and disunity of the opposition, and still be dogged by a crisis of legitimacy because he didn’t allow a fair contest.

On April 23, I wrote a Facebook post about two contradictory impulses of Nigerian politicians. I said Nigerian politicians are some of the most incurably optimistic specimens of humans you can find on earth. That’s why you have opposition politicians who can’t even agree on who their candidate will be in 2027, say with cocksure certitude that they can wrest power from a man who defied all odds to get to power while out of it and has since consolidated power by ensuring that INEC and the judiciary are in his pocket.

But I also pointed out that Nigerian politicians can be some of the most cowardly people while outwardly projecting faux bravery. That is why a politician who has 32 governors, INEC, the judiciary, an unrivalled war chest and a gravely divided opposition is still so fearful of his chances of winning that he doesn’t want the opposition to even have a platform to challenge him.

Tinubu joked on April 14, 2026, that he could send Godswill Akpabio to the opposition to “scatter them”. Days later, on April 20, his chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, publicly urged ADC lawmaker Leke Abejide to remain in the party so that he could “fight them” and “scatter them”. Abejide said yesterday that Gbajabiamila was only joking, just like his boss, Tinubu.

An English proverb says, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” That is, people often reveal serious truths while pretending to joke.

ADC’s fate is currently hanging in the balance, and if the past is any guide, the David Mark leadership of the party might lose in the federal high court. That would be an avoidably self-inflicted political injury for Tinubu. He doesn’t need to use the instruments of the state to “scatter” the ADC, the NDC, the PRP or any other potential platform opposition politicians might need. The opposition is doing a better job “scattering” itself than he can ever do, even with the instruments of the state.

Tinubu may not need to defeat the opposition because the opposition appears determined to defeat itself. An opposition that lacks the self-denial, strategic patience and moral urgency necessary to galvanize popular resentment and win power doesn’t deserve power.

Until Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Kwankwaso and others understand that power is rarely handed to the disunited, the vain and the impatient, they will remain Tinubu’s most reliable unpaid campaigners.

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

By Alex Onyia

There was a time in this country when a man looked at the future and refused to accept mediocrity.

His name was Nnamdi Azikiwe.

In 1960, as Nigeria stood on the edge of independence, he didn’t just celebrate freedom, he designed it. He envisioned a university that would not copy the colonial system, but challenge it. A university that would produce thinkers, builders, and leaders for a new Africa.

That dream became University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

It was bold. It was revolutionary.

The first indigenous university in Nigeria. Built on the American educational model. A place where merit, curiosity, and innovation would define the African mind.

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UNN was not just a school, it was a statement: “We can think for ourselves.”

But today… walk into those hostels. And try not to feel your chest tighten.

Rooms built for 4 students now hold 10. Mattresses laid on bare floors. Broken windows patched with cardboard. Toilets that have forgotten what water feels like.

Walls that have absorbed decades of neglect, sweat, and silence. This is not just decay but rather this is betrayal. Because how do you place a young girl or boy full of dreams, full of fire into an environment that slowly erodes their dignity?

How do you expect brilliance to thrive where basic humanity is absent? We like to talk about moral decline, about distractions, about “this generation.” But nobody wants to talk about what happens when young people are forced to survive, not learn.

When privacy disappears. When safety becomes uncertain. When the line between resilience and desperation begins to blur.

Environments shape behavior. And somewhere in those overcrowded rooms, something is being lost. Focus. Discipline. Innocence. And then, the most painful part. The silence. Not the silence of peace but the silence of fear.

Students who speak up risk intimidation. Staff who demand better conditions are quietly sidelined. Voices that should drive reform are sometimes treated like threats. So people learn. They learn to whisper instead of speak.

They learn to endure instead of question. They learn that survival in the system often means compliance.

But a university is supposed to be the birthplace of ideas, not a place where courage is punished. When truth becomes dangerous, education becomes hollow.

University of Nigeria, Nsukka was built to raise giants. Today, too many are being trained to tolerate.

And the painful truth is this: A nation that neglects its students is failing but a nation that silences its students is collapsing.

We must go back to basics and restore the dignity of man.

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