Lateef Fagbemi, Malami and the curse of history

SO Nigeria’s arguably most powerful man just two years and seven months ago, who hulked over the Muhammadu Buhari administration and the polity like an octopus for eight years, Abubakar Malami, SAN, did his crossover to 2026 in prison, with wife and son! A stunning reversal of fortune?

Yoruba believe that the one in the ditch is a natural lesson to others, especially those treading the periphery of a perilous precipice. But the dog that will stray won’t hear the hunter’s whistling and those the gods will destroy, they first make mad.

Let me tell a personal story.

Now-late Dr. Julius Makanjuola, a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Defence, was a big uncle. Of course, he was Ijesa and had his allotted heritage in Iwaraja, a surburb of Ilesa. Pre-Obasanjo presidency, he was an ally of the Ota farmer and a loyal friend during his near-death experience as Abacha’s prisoner. When friends fled the former head of state because of Abacha’s fangs, the one we called Makay behind his back (we also adulated him as Baba, with Lagos lingo accent) stayed staunchly and when Obasanjo moved from prison to presidency, he acknowledged uncle’s loyalty with a lift from Revenue Mobilisation Commission to the Defence Ministry. Then began Makay’s issues with Theophilus Danjuma, then-Defence minister and now a billionaire who confessed to not knowing what to do with his vast wealth. While the inside story would remain disputed, the public account was that Baba and four directors were caught helping themselves to public fund. Obasanjo wouldn’t stop his friend’s arrest and prosecution. Then something unprecedented happened. Obasanjo’s first of the five AGFs he worked with in his eight years in office, Kanu Agabi SAN, entered a controversial nolleprosequi, as empowered by the Constitution, to quash Makay’s N420 million fraud trial, just as the trial Abuja High Court was prepping to deliver judgement. Then Obasanjo did the unthinkable. He publicly called out his AGF. In a biting rebuke dated July 23, 2002, the President wrote thus to Agabi, “If this move is a mistake, Dr. Makanjuola and his co-defendants are to be immediately re-arrested and taken back to court for trial. If, on the other hand, the move was a deliberate act, there is urgent need to explain the rationale behind it to me” adding that the move “makes nonsense of government’s crusade against corruption”.

Of course, nobody will confront the king’s machete with bare hands. The laceration from the expected slashing will be too deep.

If Makanjuola felt unprotected by his president-friend while his ordeal lasted, what must have irreparably broken him was Obasanjo perceivably unfriending him. When Obasanjo’s re-election campaign hit Osun, Baba was very certain and even mentioned it to the few people left around him, that his friend would visit him in his Iwaraja farm (it would seem Obasanjo motivated him into large-scale farming). But the President was a no-show. The shame likely followed Baba to his grave.

Obasanjo using his long-standing friends like Makay, now-late Sunday Afolabi and ex-senate president Adolphous Wabara as anti-corruption guinea-pigs, would not invalidate the fact his presidency also weaponised the justice sector against his political opponents and in the defence of business and political interests of his “sons” and “daughters”; a governance crime, embraced by almost all his successors including the incumbent.

Strangely though, except the five who served Obasanjo as AGF; Agabi, now-late Bola Ige, Musa Abdullahi Elayo (the only non-SAN to occupy the position so far), Akin Olujinmi and Bayo Ojo, all, after them, have been in one crisis or the other, though the incumbent, Ijagbo-born Lateef Fagbemi appears to be clever in playing his hands in political matters, especially the seized Osun local government fund and the emergency rule in Rivers, two phenomena bitterly attacked by his principal, Bola Tinubu, pre-his presidency. Now the Nigerian leader casually chews on what he once called a venom.

The trio of UmaruYar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan and Buhari as presidents used just one AGF each and all three, Mike Aondoakaa, Bello Adoke and Malami ended with mangled public images, without discounting the allegations of lawfare and political persecution by the succeeding administration, seeking to barbecue the AGF before it, though the trio can’t also be designated angelic or saintly in office.

So how did Obasanjo manage five men at different times in an office that is fast becoming a burial ground for names and reputation of its occupants, without any ending in infamy, including even Agabi who entered uncle’s controversial nolle, while his successors couldn’t straighten up just an AGF each?

Is It likely OBJ is a better supervisor than all his successors or he was just blessed to work with decent men in the powerful office? Funny enough, Obasanjo, in seeking a second term in office, had a tougher political battle to win. He was combating a “household” enemy in his Vee Pee Atiku Abubakar, and unabashedly deployed Nuhu Ribadu’s EFCC against his opponents. Yet despite the Commission being under his AGF, there was no soiling of the office. Same credit should go to Adoke, who reportedly rejected a push by some in Jonathan’s inner circle to use the office nefariously for election purposes. But same can’t be said of contractual and commercial issues. The truth of the sleaze allegations against Adoke is hanging in-between, somewhere.

Malami’s incarceration and legal woes have lengthened and sustained the suspected curse on the powerful office since Obasanjo’s last AGF. No doubt, OBJ with his virulent and visceral way of reacting to provocations would have definitely demanded what Yoruba will describe as ise de toru toru (very daunting task) from his AGFs who must have found ways to communicate their loyalty without sacrificing integrity. Yoruba believe any kind of errand can be delivered once wisdom is in play and it must also be noted that presidential errands weren’t part of the alleged sleaze cases built against the trio of Aondoakaa, Adoke and Malami. Let every man answer for his “sin” jare!

It was Pastor Adeboye who famously sermonised that a wise fellow will need to learn from both the wise and the fool; the lesson from the wise is to ensure one stays wise and the lesson from the fool, is to ensure one doesn’t transit into foolishness.

One thing that suggests to me the current AGF might survive the curse of the office is his sparing use of nolle and the power to quash criminal indictments though he got involved days back, but in purely business transaction gone awry. His “intervention” went “noiseless” because the beneficiaries were not politicians and one is even a foreigner. For his sake, I hope no finder’s fee went back to him for the legal opinion overruling police criminal indictment of those involved. Jesus says there is nothing hidden that would not be made known (Matthew 10:26). When 2027 politicking heats up, Fagbemi’s principal may need his foot firmer on the accelerator. Already, there are allegations of persecution of the opposition, while no known APC leader is currently in the dock despite numerous, with case files with EFCC and by extension, the AGF.

When Aondoakaa was battling his legal woes, Adoke was the AGF. When Adoke’s troubles started, Malami was the AGF. Now, Malami’s ordeal is on the watch of Fagbemi. Does that signal anything to the man on the hot seat?

The justice minister is well known to me. His “twin” brother is my great “egbon”. I can never wish Prince ill, but he has to bend his ears to the music of history while dancing to the sound of politics. Sarki Goma, Zamani Goma.

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