A January 08, 2024 “STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE” Under the head, “PRESIDENT TINUBU SUSPENDS MINISTER OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION FROM OFFICE” quotes Chief Ajuri Ngelale, Special Adviser to the President(Media & Publicity) as saying that “In line with his avowed commitment to uphold the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability in the management of the commonwealth of Nigerians, President Bola Tinubu suspends the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu, from office with immediate effect. The President further directs the Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to conduct a thorough investigation into all aspects of the financial transactions involving the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, as well as one or more agencies thereunder. The suspended Minister is hereby directed to hand over to the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, and she is further directed by the President to fully cooperate with the investigating authorities as they conduct their investigation. Furthermore, the President has tasked a panel that is headed by the Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance to, among other functions, conduct a comprehensive diagnostic on the financial architecture and framework of the social investment programmes with a view to conclusively reforming the relevant institutions and programmes in a determined bid to eliminate all institutional frailties for the exclusive benefit of disadvantaged households and win back lost public confidence in the initiative. These directives of the President take immediate effect”.

MY REACTION:
👏👏👍👍🩷🩷👏👏
In the area of fight against corruption, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President of Nigeria may turn out to be a “TownHall different from Bala Blu”. In my opinion, when something is or associater with “Bala Blu”, it means that the thing is crooked, jaga-jaga, shady, apaque, lacking in integrity. So, if a town hall is different from Bala Blu, it means the said Town Hall is transparent, in compliance with the requirements of integrity, accountability, responsibility and responsiveness. With his recent actions in the area of fight against corruption, President Bola Tinubu appears to be going the way of a Town Hall that is different from Bala Blu. Commendable!

Well done, Mr President Tinubu. Zero tolerance for corruption is what I call this. 👏👏🩷🩷👏👏🙏🙏. Well done, Your Excellency, sir.

I recall President Tinubu’s riot act to his Ministers on 01 November 2023: ‘Perform Or Get Booted Out, Tinubu Tells Ministers” (TheLiberationNews.ng; 01 November 2023). And I recall also part of my suggestions towards getting it right in our quest to fight corruption:
“Until we enthrone good, transparent, inclusive and selfless governance, we might never get it right in our fighting against corruption…. Corruption has its own motivations, and one has to thoroughly study that phenomenon and eliminate the foundations that allow corruption to exist…. Rigoberta Menchú, a Nobel Prize laureate said: “Without strong watchdog institutions, impunity becomes the very foundation upon which systems of corruption are built. And if impunity is not demolished, all efforts to bring an end to corruption are in vain.”
[See: “Fight Against Corruption In Nigeria: Ten Reasons Why We Are Not Succeeding; Ten Things We Must Do If We Want To Succeed”; Sylvester Udemezue; 15 April 2021; TheNigeriaLawyer.com).
Please, I suggest Presidential advisers should still go through my humble piece (“Fight Against Corruption In Nigeria: Ten Reasons Why We Are Not Succeeding; Ten Things We Must Do If We Want To Succeed”) to see if there is any one or more tips they could take away from it to join to what they’re doing towards enthroning transparency, accountability and integrity in Government. The work began with the following preamble: “if we want the fight against corruption in Nigeria to work as effectively and efficiently as similar projects work in some other countries, then certain principles and attitudes must be in place, and honestly respected. I respectfully put forward the following suggestions, the pursuit and realization of which, I believe, would help nip corruption in the bud in Nigeria:… “

Also respectfully suggested is that they graciously examine aspects of my discussions on governance and good governance in my paper titled, “Role of Company Employees in Promoting Corporate Governance: A Comparative Analysis of the Approaches in Nigeria and the United Kingdom” (2020) 3(1), Redeemer’s University Law Journal, 191 @ 192-196 (http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3907553 or or or https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Role-of-Company-Employees-in-Promoting-Corporate-A-Udemezue/015ad48fc0a76396f3f3d5eb39510a9326f027ad)]. For example, according to UNESCAP,
good governance possesses eight major features, namely: Participation, Rule of Law, Transparency, Responsiveness, Consensus-Oriented,
Equity and inclusiveness, Accountability, Effectiveness and efficiency. [UNESCAP, “What Is Good Governance?” (ESCAP) https://www.unescap.org/resources/what-goodgovernance]

On his part, Roman identified what he called three major pillars that together represent the idea of good governance, and which are fundamental to successful management of any society or organisation: Accountability, Transparency and Security. [See: Roman A, “The Three Pillars of Corporate Governance” (Azeus Convene, June 24, 2021)
https://www.azeusconvene.com/articles/three-pillars-of-corporate-governance]

BUT, WHY AM I WRITING?
A major duty legal researchers and rule of law campaigners (such as I’m) owe our society in the practice of constitutional democracy for promotion and sustenance of responsible and responsive governance is to constantly offer legal opinions on issues of law to guide our leaders and institutions in the discharge of leadership responsibilities.

May God help President Tinubu’s leadership to succeed. May God help Nigeria and Nigerians.
Respectfully,
Sylvester Udemezue (udems).
(Lawyer)
08109024556.
[email protected].
➖➖

By Farooq A. Kperogi

In a June 23, 2020, article titled “Sabiu Yusuf’s Fat Bank Accounts that Shocked CBN Governor” where I revealed that Muhammadu Buhari’s relative Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf had salted away so much money in banks that even former CBN governor Godwin Emefiele was so alarmed that he advised him to divvy up the money into different accounts, I said, “The stench bomb of fetid corruption that will explode after Buhari leaves office would be so unprecedentedly malodorous it would deaden Nigeria’s collective nasal sensibility for a long time.”

At the time, some people thought I was merely being hyperbolic for literary effect. But isn’t that what is happening now? Every day, we are regaled with stories of mindless, freewheeling theft of our public wealth by officials and relatives of Muhammadu Buhari. And what we’ve learned so far is just a tip of the iceberg.

All that happened during Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year reign was unstrained, stratospheric, eyewatering corruption the scale of which Nigeria had never experienced. It was a raucous, brazen, cheerfully irresponsible kleptocratic bazaar. While it happened, governance took the backseat, leading me to characterize Buhari’s reign as the era of “ungovernance.”

The Central Bank of Nigeria under Emefiele and the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development under Sadiya Umar Farouq are competing for frontrunner status as outposts of the most decadent kleptocratic predation.

Emefiele, whom I described in a May 14, 2022, column as an “infernally incompetent, exceptionally corrupt, mind-blowingly self-serving, incomprehensibly clueless, overweeningly ambitious, and cruelly insensitive” clown, became the conduit for unmentionable financial crimes against Nigeria involving Buhari’s relatives, close friends, and associates. While feathering his own nest, he was a dutiful poodle of the consciencelessly thieving, ill-famed Aso Rock cabal, which humored him by telling him he would succeed Buhari in 2023.

“If someone wrote a tragicomic drama script about Godwin Emefiele’s scandal-ridden reign as a central bank governor and his ludicrously insane attempts to run for president using the financial and symbolic resources of the central bank while still a central bank governor who hurls consequence-free insults and wishes death upon critics for calling attention to the manifest conflict of interest that his presidential run represents, literary critics would pillory the script for its implausible plot,” I wrote about Emefiele in my May 14, 2022 column titled “Emefiele: A Corrupt, Inept, Heart-Attack-Loving Presidential Wannabe.”

Sadiya Umar Farouq’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has also turned out to be one of the most putrid morasses of venality and fraud during the Buhari years. Sadiya is now predictably dodging the EFCC using the favorite tactic of Nigerian elites entwined in the web of accounting for their corruption: pretense of ill health.

When I read that the EFCC was inviting her to account for more than N37 billion that she allegedly laundered, I was shocked by the “smallness” of the amount in light of what I know about the magnitude of pillaging she perpetrated at the ministry. I was relieved when I read a January 4th EFCC statement saying, “We are still tracing all the transactions, hence we cannot put a figure to everything now as the investigation is still ongoing.”

We are talking here of a woman who spent more than N500 million to feed non-existent schoolkids in their homes in Lagos, Ogun, and the FCT while schools were closed in 2020, a woman whom a 2017 Daily Nigerian report said stole dabinos worth millions of naira donated to IDPs by Saudi Arabia during Ramadan (which she hasn’t denied) while she was Federal Commissioner in charge of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons.

In a June 15, 2023, appearance on the Brekete Family radio show in Abuja, Muhammed Kazaure Gudaji, a member of the House of Representatives representing the Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa, Yankwashi Constituency of Jigawa State who is famous for his brutal forthrightness, verbal directness, and less than perfect English articulation, said what most of us know.

A rock-ribbed Muhammadu Buhari partisan, Gudaji nonetheless pointed out that enormous theft of public resources took place during the Buhari regime, and that if the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu wanted to be taken seriously, it must arrest and investigate 12 high-profile personages of the Buhari regime.

He gave their names as former Godwin Emefiele; former EFCC chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa (and Magu, too); Group Managing Director of NNPC Mele Kolo Kyari; Former Justice Minister and Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami; former FIRS chairman Muhammad Mamman Nami; Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf; DG of NIMSA Bashir Jamoh; Mohammed Bello-Koko of the Nigerian Ports Authority; Hadiza Bala Usman also formerly of NPA; all CBN deputy governors who served with Emefiele; and the “entire leaders of the National Inter-Bank Settlement System.”

I have no knowledge of the corrupt dealings of everyone on Gudaji’s list— or whether, in fact, he has a basis to accuse them of colossal corruption—but I have learned not to dismiss the man with a wave of the hand because of his rhetorical unsophistication. And the fact that Emefiele, Bawa, Sadiya, and some CBN deputy governors are under probe months after his plea to Tinubu should tell us that he isn’t a flippant blabbermouth.

Of course, Buhari is aware of the massive corruption that took place in his government. I know for a fact, for example, that he was aware of Sabiu “Tunde” Yusuf’s ill-gotten wealth. I have also been reliably informed that he helped cover the corruption of family members who were caught abroad with unusually large amounts of cash.

Two weeks ago, for instance, someone close to the Buhari family shared with me a disturbing story of the last-minute monkey business that the Buhari family perpetrated with Buhari’s own active connivance.

He wrote: “The son of a very prominent Nigerian (he held no official role, but was the most powerful Nigerian after PMB) in the previous government was arrested and detained for 2 days in England for bringing into the country cash worth millions of dollars/pounds.

“The Nigerian government, with direct intervention of the former president Buhari, intervened and used the Nigerian embassy in London to rescue the son who is in his 30s and related to PMB. This happened when PMB was in Saudi Arabia for the lesser hajj so you can guess the period it happened.

“The money was seized by the UK government initially, but the Nigerian high commission in London insisted that the money was meant for ‘security’. They got the money back and handed it over to the young man who stashed it away in London in preparation for them leaving power.”

Although I have not independently verified the authenticity of this disturbing story, I have chosen to share it publicly because it is consistent with a pattern I am deeply familiar with. The coming days will reveal the financial crimes Buhari, his family, and associates have committed against Nigeria.

Unfortunately, some of the crimes Buhari’s people committed in his eight-year reign are reappearing now. It has now come to light, for example, that Betta Chimaobim Edu, the successor to Sadiya Umar Farouq has started the same pattern of theft by her predecessor.

In a leaked December 20, 2023, memo to the Accountant-General of the Federation, Edu instructed that money designated for “Vulnerable Groups in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Ogun and Lagos,” which amounted to more than N500 million, should be paid into the private UBA account of a Bridget Mojisola Oniyelu in violation of Nigeria’s public sector financial regulation law.

The regulation says public money should not, under any circumstance, be paid into private bank accounts. “Any officer who pays public money into a private bank account is deemed to have done so with fraudulent intentions,” section 713 of the act says.

This is a momentous moment for Tinubu. If he does not fire Edu forthwith and bring her to justice, he has already lost the moral high ground to try Buhari’s corrupt honchos.

Some cabinet members went to Western Region premier, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, to complain about the corruption of one of their colleagues. They said the man was stealing their party’s funds and eating government money with reckless abandon. They said the gentleman’s impunity knew neither the fear of the law, nor of the party and the people. “He is even building two houses at the same time,” they rammed it in. Chief Akintola listened attentively to the complainants and their complaints. He then turned to the accused who was also seated right there.

“You heard that? They said you are building two houses at the same time; you are building one in Oyo; you are building another in Ibadan. You are the party’s treasurer; you are also in charge of the government’s finances. Can’t houses be built one after the other? (Ngbó, wón ní ò nkó’le méjì léèkan soso; ìkan l’Òyó, ìkan n’Bàdàn? Ìwo ni treasurer egbé; ìwo náà ni minister owó. Sé ilé ò seé kó ní’kòòkan ni?).” If that line of adjudication was strange to the complaint lodgers, Chief Akintola was still not done with them. He had some words for the accusers.

“Each of you is in charge of a ministry of government. If we flash a torch into your anus, won’t we see faeces?” He asked, looking straight into their eyes. They looked down. Then Akintola faced the leader of the accusers. “And you, but I know that you have just built a house in Ibadan for one of your mistresses (Ìwo, mo sebí o sèsè kó’lé fún àlè re kan n’Bàdàn ni). The accusers were shocked by their leader’s bent of justice. But they ought not to be shocked. The leader once said publicly that he was a master of equivocation. The premier didn’t release his guests without a warning to both sides to be sensitive to public sensibilities in their use of public funds.

Dr Omololu Olunloyo, a second republic governor of the old Oyo State, will be 89 years old this year. He once told me the significance of this year in his life but I am not permitted to say it – at least, not now. Where I come from, a man does not tell all he is told. Olunloyo also knows too much, perhaps that explains his ‘refusal’ to write his autobiography despite our prodding and pressure. But he told me stories, one of which is the Akintola story I just told above – although I have hidden the names of the accused and the accusers. I will tell yet another one from that former governor, especially now that the Federal Republic of Nigeria is enmeshed in an argument over whether or not it is permitted and legal in public service to officially move public money into private accounts.

Olunloyo was very close to Akintola. He was also very close to Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. One day, Balewa drew Olunloyo aside and told him his story of helplessness: “Doctor Olunloyo, this country is a country of thieves. As I sit here, my appointees managing the central bank are stealing money. If I move my seat from here to the CBN, right under my nose and supervision there, they will still steal money. Look, I just caught a thief, but they said I can’t prosecute him because of where he comes from – unless I catch at least one thief each from the other regions.”

If Vulture claims that it is not today that the rains started beating him, you think he is lying. Please, believe Vulture. The two cases above occurred in the early 1960s – that was some sixty-something years ago. And it wasn’t only the political class that was implicated. Even the wretched of the earth believe in fish eating fish to get fat.

In 1952/1953, seven years before independence, there was a commission of inquiry into the administration of Lagos Town Council. The commission found that “in hospitals, nurses require a fee from every in-patient before the prescribed medicine is given, and even the ward servants must have their ‘dash’ before bringing the bed-pan; it is known to be rife in the Police Motor Traffic Unit, which has unrivalled opportunities on account of the common practice of overloading vehicles; pay clerks make a deduction from the wages of daily paid staff; produce examiners exact a fee from the produce buyer for every bag that is graded and sealed; domestic servants pay a proportion of their wages to the senior of them, besides often having paid a lump sum to buy the job.” Can you see the class of those implicated in those findings? Ordinary workers. Public and private sector workers still do it; politicians do it; they buy and sell positions. Indeed, our political situation has always been like eighteenth century England when “it was taken for granted that the purpose for going into parliament or holding any public office was to make or repair a man’s personal fortune” (R. M. Jackson, 1958, page 345).

Above, you read about people buying public and private jobs in 1952/1953 Lagos. You would think 60 years of independence should be long enough for a people’s redemption to occur. But jobs are still being purchased in Nigeria of 2024. If anything has changed in our story over the last six decades, it is that the acorn of misdeeds of the past has grown to become an oak. The oak is that behemoth no one wraps their arms around to climb. The oak is igi osè in my part of the world. If you are Yoruba, you should be familiar with this incantation: Wón d’òyì k’ápá, apá ò k’ápá; wón d’òyì k’ósè apá ò k’ósè…). That is what corruption has become. The law is helpless before the powerful because no sane person looks into a deep well and jumps into it. It is our major gain in sixty years of flag independence. Our country is fully vaccinated against all virtues. Follow the variegated stories around Emefiele. Instead of retail stealing in the central bank, the CBN itself has been stolen – what we have there is ‘kòròfo ìsáná’ – a matchbox without matchsticks. Follow other recent scandals in Abuja. Instead of government ministers being content with stealing their ministries’ money “to build two houses simultaneously,” they are stealing the ministries. Yet, nothing happens to the plunderers because they are like human eyes – they come with divine immunity from intrusive fingers – Àánú ojú kìí jé kí wón t’owó b’ojú. They are also like rattle snakes –Ìbèrù ejò kìí jé kí wón te ejò mó’lè. Another incantation!

You saw a document that surfaced some days ago signed by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu. In that memo, Edu directed the Accountant General of the Federation to transfer the sum of N585,198,500.00 into a private account belonging to one Oniyelu Bridget. There was a national uproar. If you were part of the outrage, it means you no get job. Did you not see that the minister did not disown the document? With her full chest, she owned it and declared what she did as legal. She also did not forget to blame the leakage and the outrage on her enemies. She called them desperate persons implicated in an earlier scandal of N44.8bn in the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA). She said they wanted to “stain her integrity because she alerted the government on the ongoing N44.8 Billion fraud in NSIPA…” She was referring to the scandal that has led to the suspension of the National Coordinator and chief executive of the NSIPA, Mrs. Halima Shehu, by President Bola Tinubu. There are reports that Halima moved that amount (N44.8 Billion) into some unusual accounts. We do not have the details. And, we have not heard her own defence direct from her mouth. But her own people plead her innocence; they are accusing her enemies of being behind her ordeal.

Then the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, weighed in on Saturday. She said although her office received the said request from Edu, it ignored it. She said she did not make the payment as instructed because the procedure was wrong.

The engine of Nigeria’s bureaucracy has broken down. The Yoruba would say if the short one is not wise, what about the tall one? Were civil servants in Edu’s ministry who presumably drafted the memo for her to sign not aware of the existence of the laws guiding the processing, movement and use of public funds? There is Nigeria’s Financial Regulations 2009. Its Chapter Seven, Section 713 states that “personal money shall in no circumstances be paid into a government bank account, nor shall any public money be paid into a private account.” If the civil servants didn’t know the law, you would think the person signing that half-a-billion naira memo would pause and check. Was there not a retreat shortly after the ministers were appointed? What were they taught at those opulent sessions?

Things are happening. We only know what our husbands allow us to know or what ‘accidentally’ leaks like the N44.8 billion suspension and the N585 million memo. The present Federal Government with its three branches is particularly audacious in doing the unthinkable. The unthinkable is what you calmly do when you know you’ve conquered the world.

We can dismiss all these and say they do not matter, that after all, no money is lost (yet). But that deadly, slithering being called snake has a way of climbing its way to the top of the raffia palm. Ninety-two-year-old British political scientist, Colin Leys, in 1965 wrote on the consequences of corruption, impunity and sleaze on the future of Africa. Writing in his ‘What is the Problem about Corruption?’ Leys argued that “If the top political elite of a country consumes its time and energy in trying to get rich by corrupt means, it is not likely that the (country’s) development plans will be fulfilled.” His prediction reeked of doom. About that time, Ronald Wraith and Edgar Simpkins published their book, ‘Corruption in Developing Countries’ (1963). They looked into practices in African countries, including Nigeria. They said they saw a “jungle of nepotism and temptation… a dangerous and tragic situation.” They described the landscape as “the scarlet thread of bribery and corruption.” They witnessed malfeasance flourishing “as luxuriantly as the bush and weeds which it so much resembles.” They saw the toxins of corruption “taking the goodness from the soil and suffocating the growth of plants which have been carefully and expensively bred and tended.” I suggest you read that metaphor of gloom again. If nothing fruitful grows today, it is because the earth was scorched yesterday.

The vaccine that will cure our political elite of greed has not been made. Lanrewaju Adepoju, a Yoruba performing poet who died recently, looked at a situation like this in the 1980s and declared that nothing overwhelmed a babaláwo more than being confronted with a bad case that permitted no remedial ritual. The Nigerian situation is pretty much like a terminal illness – or worse, like a carcass being mobbed by a pack of wolves and a wake of vultures. Everyone tears at it, exacting their share. And the predators are very bold and daring. Socialists and Marxists will blame this tragedy on the greed of capitalism and its lack of shame. English trade unionist, Thomas Dunning (1799-1873), quoted by Karl Marx in his three-volume work ‘Capital’ said “With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 percent, positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both…” Just sit back and, like Akintola, take a long look at the accused and the accusers in the current scandal in Abuja. Look at the entire business architecture of government. Corruption is the only business that yields returns here. In 60 years plus, the Nigerian state has established itself as a crime scene. We all know that things can’t continue like this without the world coming to an end. But the questions are: Where is the face of the saviour? And who really is clean?

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In 2008, shortly after his inauguration as the president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and former Governor of Ondo State, who has died at 67 of cancer-related causes, had before his desk the request by the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee (LPPC) to provide comments on behalf of the Association on a shortlist of candidates for the award of the rank of SAN.

In the same month, a judge sitting in the Federal High Court in Kano had referred a lawyer in the same city to the Association for possible professional discipline in connection with an allegation of serious mis-conduct in proceedings before the judge.

As president of the NBA, Aketi, as he was known, directed a senior official of the NBA to transmit the communication from the judge to the LPPC. Unknown to Aketi, the official whom he requested to do this, partly owed his own office to the lawyer. When the list of new SANs came out later in October 2008, that same lawyer was on the list. It turned out that the NBA official whom Aketi had directed to communicate with the LPPC had deliberately subverted the instruction and failed to do so.

That lawyer in Kano later rose to high ministerial office under Muhammadu Buhari. Although they notionally belonged to the same political party, Aketi’s assessment of him as lacking in character never wavered. It proved accurate.

This vignette provides an insight into the kind of leader that Aketi was. He was a man of deep conviction but not always of great detail. He trusted people to respect channels of authority and could neither understand nor abide the chicanery that defined leadership and public life in Nigeria.  

Aketi embodied all the virtues for which Owo, the frontier kingdom in Ondo State from which he came, is famous. He was a man of candour, simplicity, generosity, deep conviction, and fearsome courage. And he believed in leadership, public service and the defence of the public good even at great personal inconvenience or sacrifice.

The second son of an Anglican priest, Aketi’s life was defined by unwavering commitment to equity, service to country and to the community. When he was born on 21 July, 1956, Obafemi Awolowo was the Premier of the Western Region. Aketi’s primary education began in the thick of the post-Independence crisis in the Western Region in which Owo was a major theatre. Following his secondary education at Loyola College in Ibadan, Aketi attended Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU) Ile-Ife, from where he graduated in 1977 with a degree in law.

The following year, in 1978, he was admitted to the Nigeria Bar. As an undergraduate, he shared billetings with Olusegun Mimiko. Denied his mandate as governor of Ondo State in 2007, Mimiko needed a good lawyer to help him recover it and found one in his old mate, Aketi, who subsequently challenged him unsuccessfully for the keys to Alagbaka, the seat of the Government House in Akure, the capital of Ondo State. When Mimiko left office at the end of his two terms in 2017, Aketi succeeded him.

Aketi was comfortable in the company of strong women. One of his closest personal and professional relationships was with Chief Folake Solanke, the senior lawyer in Ibadan and first female SAN in Nigeria. Youth Service year saw him in Enugu where he met the formidable Betty Anyanwu, from Emeabiam, near Owerri, the Imo State capital. A cancer survivor herself, Betty read aquaculture, an excellent qualification for managing the unpredictable waters that would define her husband’s trajectory.

That trajectory prepared him well for the journey into public life. Seven years after qualifying as a lawyer, in 1985, the Ibadan Bar elected Aketi as its general secretary. The bar in Ibadan is known for its deep traditions of discipline and collegiality. The year after he finished his tenure in this role, I first met Aketi during my national service in the famously hospitable garrison city. He was building a quiet reputation for himself in bar politics and it marked the beginning of a life-long relationship.

In 1992, Aketi attended the controversial conference of the NBA in Port Harcourt as the Chair of the Ibadan Branch, becoming a central character in the Association’s inconclusive elections of that year. The previous year, he’d served as the Vice-Chair.

Three years after completing his tenure leading the Ibadan Bar, Anthony Onyearugulem, the Navy captain from Ikeduru, Imo State, who was military administrator of Ondo State, appointed Aketi the Attorney-General of Ondo State. Wole Olanipekun, the Senior Advocate who served in the same position six years earlier in 1991 had also preceded him to the presidency of the NBA by the same number of years.

The following year, in 1998, he became the 139^th lawyer to be enrolled as Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). Preceding his name on the roll of SANs was Olisa Agbakoba, together with whom he had graduated from the Nigerian Law School in 1978. By a unique stroke of coincidence, in August 2008, Aketi succeeded Olisa to become the 24^th president of the NBA.

Bayo Ojo, who was elected to the position in 2004 also graduated from the Nigerian Law School in 1978 as did OCJ Okocha before him, completing an improbable quartet from the 1978 set who led the NBA in the decade from 2000 to 2010.

In Ibadan, where he made his home and built his vocation and reputation, the streets admired Aketi as much as his profession loved him. It was where he earned his spurs as everyone’s favorite brother, the Arakunrin.

In partnership with Akinlolu Olujinmi, a Senior Advocate and former Attorney-General of the Federation, he built one of the most formidable law offices from Ibadan, if not the country. The LawHub, the sprawling law office complex that offers young lawyers in the city free or subsidized office space for take-off in the profession, was his professional give-back. Through it, Aketi mentored and supported younger lawyers too numerous to count.

The profession appreciated and requited his selflessness. In 2008, he became the only lawyer in living memory to be returned unopposed to the presidency of the NBA. It is unlikely to be repeated.

Aketi was a man with minimal needs and no ego. As president of the NBA and as Governor, he paid his bills. He disliked parasites and was not a man for luxury. At the Ibadan Bar and in his politics, Aketi, the man of deep ideology, would nevertheless defer to the elders even when he disagreed with them.

His loyalties were never in doubt. In 2018, as Governor of Ondo State, he returned to Enugu, the city in which he met his wife, to commission the law office of Ikeazor Akaraiwe, who had served as First Vice-President during his tenure as President of the NBA. Aketi arrived for the event in the evening from the funeral in Onitsha of Ositadinma Jude Nnadi, SAN, with whom he had formed a good relationship despite working on opposite sides of a case. Delayed on his journey to Enugu, the commissioning took place in the twilight hours and, once it was done, he headed back to Akure by road.

It was in the heat of a crisis of insecurity in Ondo State in which his intervention in the face of presidential indifference was both courageous and decisive. As Governor, Aketi was keen to show that the idea of a regional concert to respond to that insecurity was viable.

It is impossible to miss the contrast between the courage that defined Aketi’s life and the cowardliness of those who, while his earthly remains were still warm, set upon his wife of over four decades with a disgraceful campaign of innuendo and character assassination, generously garnished with toxic chauvinism and vile bigotry.

On his return from prolonged hospitalization overseas in September, 2023, Aketi, the cancer patient, who had already beaten the most optimistic prognostications of the doctors, prayed to be able to live to complete his tenure in 2025. In reality, he knew he was on borrowed time. Aketi relished one last battle with mortality but even his legendary will and courage proved to be no match for a determined enemy. Two days after Christmas, on 27 December, immortality arrived.

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