The Abubakar Malami metaphor

Happy New Year dear reader. I thankfully welcome you to 2026 and wish you a fruitful year.

Nigeria is a country that breeds and nurtures societal oddities on a large scale. The detention and ongoing trial of the country’s immediate past chief law officer, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is one of the numerous pointers to this. Another example that readily comes to mind is the situation of Godwin Emefiele, the erstwhile governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank. On paper, any person appointed and confirmed by the Senate to hold the position of a country’s Attorney-General – or even that of a state, should, in its pristine sense, ordinarily be above board.

The same thing goes for the position of the governor of the central bank. This should be without question but in some cases, such situations get question-marked, but still curiously pass security and legislative scrutiny. However, it could be argued that those individuals who sink into the odd side of their country’s morality planes are usually few and far-between. But they exist and they are never a good image for their countries. Examples have been made of central bank chiefs in China, Lebanon, Slovakia, Latvia and so on, but in their cases, check the size of the money or the type of issues they are dealing with or have dealt with, compared to Nigeria’s.

Abubakar Malami was saddled with the high responsibility of upholding Nigeria’s laws and fighting corruption all through the eight years of Muhammad Buhari as civilian president. With many people convinced of the outward sign of Buhari’s stiff anti-corruption persona, it was easy to believe that the country would get the best out of Malami and the nation’s Ministry of Justice. But he is not just in the mire of mind-boggling corruption today, he is in prison custody with some members of his family for allegedly doing exactly those things he was appointed to stop or prevent people from doing.

A few people tried to raise their voices in a song that tried to portray Malami as not being what he was expected to be. And in their same muffled song, they claimed that Malami was not doing what he was expected to do as he was expected to do as Nigeria’s chief law officer. Considering the set-up in the regime of Muhammadu Buhari, it would have been a miracle if these individuals got their argument across the line. Expectedly, they were drowned in the din that they tried to shout against along with their song and all that it tried to tell us.

One of such songs was centred on the messy suspension and subsequent removal of Justice Walter Onnoghen as the Chief Justice of Nigeria. A verse of the song that rang loud was the suspected firm hand of Malami in the sudden, inexplicable wrestling that Justice Onnoghen was dragged into by the Buhari government. One lawyer especially, Inibehe Effiong, wailed and wailed that what the Buhari government was doing to the Nigerian judiciary was illegal. “It is a desecration of our constitution for Buhari to suspend Justice Onnoghen” he submitted in a write-up published in January 2019. In the same argument, Effiong had cautioned that “President Buhari cannot suspend the CJN. The CCT cannot give an order directing the President to remove or suspend the CJN. The CCT cannot ask the CJN to ‘’step aside’’. This conspiratorial attack on the institution of the Judiciary is a dangerous precedent.”

Chief Edwin Clark was also one of the people who vocally chorused the song against Abubakar Malami. In a November 2024 letter to Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Chief Clark pointedly accused former President Buhari and Abubakar Malami of blatantly harassing, oppressing and humiliating Justice Onnoghen. He regretted that they performed their illegal operation on Onnoghen to the extent that he was hounded out of office. He described the ordeal of the former Chief Justice of Nigeria as “callous, barbaric and so unjust.” Chief Clark didn’t end his anger with only the adjectives there, he felt that Buhari and Malami orchestrated the illegal removal of Onnoghen as the CJN because of their plan to rig the 2019 elections.

Chief Clark’s open letter to Justice Kekere-Ekun was like a swansong of the elder statesman. About three months after stating his mind through the letter, he died in February 2025 at the age of 97.

This is January 2026. It is just days to the seventh anniversary of when Mr. Effiong raised his song; and it is also about eleven months after Chief Clark echoed it. The man who was the lord and master at the Nigerian Justice Ministry, and who was the director while the entire Onnoghen drama played out, is currently in incarceration. He is, today, ‘stewing in his own juices’. He is facing his own battles, answering to a 16-count charge of alleged money laundering and sundry charges of official corruption.

Another variety of song centred also on Malami was composed by Mr. Ibrahim Magu, formerly of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Magu raised his voice in vehement denial of allegations of official corruption raised against him, and which led to his being suspended from office. Magu claimed that Abubakar Malami was the man who turned the heat on him as the EFCC chairman and not the Nigerian law. He said the style through which he was being called out was suspicious, and he pointedly spoke against Malami’s tactics, describing them as pure persecution.

Through the same Code of Conduct Bureau confusion, Nigerians saw that both Malami and Magu – supposed ‘brothers’ from Kebbi State, were at daggers-drawn only because of property seized by the EFCC which were labelled “recovered assets”, and who should ‘manage’ them. Their royal father, the Emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Mustapha Jokolo, took sides with one of his feuding sons – Magu and agreed that all his other son – Malami was doing to Magu were “witch-hunting and persecution.”

Today, Malami is like a man having a dose of his own medicine. When he was first called out, he promptly laid those allegations at the feet of political persecution. Malami has blamed his hounding by the EFCC on his political affiliation, but is he right? He has also raised the kind of songs he chose not to listen to when he was in power. Now, it appears like he too is being ignored and disregarded. For instance, Professor Itse Sagay, among all the others who urged him on, has abandoned him. Malami is now alone with his ears as he reflects on his life in the recent past. Interestingly, it looks like it is going to be a long, lonely and bumpy ride on the road where he has found himself, considering his extant circumstances and the allegations brought against him.

Malami’s ordeal reminds one of an episode of the ever-hilarious The Masquerade, one of those programmes which made the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) the giant it used to be. The title of the episode isn’t readily coming to mind, but the story and the acts are ever in the memory. In the episode, the “Honourable Houseboy” Gringory had a dream and told the household of Chief Zeburudaya. He reported that in his dream, wild animals, in a general meeting, decided that they are moving into town to take the place of humans while the children of men would also move to the forest and have a taste of the jungle. The animals wanted an exchange of pulpits of roles so that there would be empathy in human – animal relations.

This dream led to serious pandemonium in the community and the ‘palace’ of Chief Zebrudaya was the usual convergence to resolve the matter. Prince Dr. Jegede Sokoya, the ‘great grandson of the Great Idi Araba’ could not imagine a royalty like himself yielding his place for lions, hyenas, giraffes and all those entities… The hilarity of the play might occupy the front burner but the message is clear: There could always be a twist in life as life does not run in a straight line.

Abubakar Malami is currently experiencing that twist. He is now in the place of those he once commanded at will, and more. Malami might also have seen Godwin Emefiele, a chief tenant in detention and they might have even laughed over their fate when they consider their roles in the government of Muhammadu Buhari. A lot of things would be running through the mind of Malami, especially, and when he remembers people like Justice Onnoghen, Ibrahim Magu, Senator Dino Melaye and the South West Governors in their matter with him about the Magodo, Lagos incident.

But, what is there for those who wield power today? The message by Gringory is for all – extant, former and future. Life is a road full of twists and turns.

Happy New Year once again.

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