Attorney-General Adoke And The Burden Of Memory By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Senior Nigerian public officers are notoriously parsimonious
with their recall once out of office. From among their club memoirs
are unusual, especially, from those with any sense of lingering
shelf-life. It’s easy to speculate as to why this is so. In a
country ruled by whim, risk aversion is prudent when you are out of
power. By remaining quiet or feigning amnesia, yesterday’s men
limit the likelihood that their successors may remember them for
the wrong reasons. Moreover, with government as the principal
guarantor of a good life, respect for the its rule of
Omerta is the only way to retain any hope of access to its
revolving doors.

When it occurs, departure from this trend is usually enforced.
This is why the memoir recently published by Mohammed Bello Adoke
is notable. Adoke, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, (SAN), was
Attorney-General and Minister of Justice under President Goodluck
Jonathan for five years from 2010 until 2015. Since leaving office,
his name has been linked with several controversies, the most high
profile being in connection with the settlement of the now Infamous
Oil Prospecting Lease (OPL) 245 granted in April 1998 by General
Abacha to the shadowy Malabu Oil and Gas Limited.

In his memoir, Adoke feels called upon to clear his name by
discharging a burden of narration in the controversies that have
dogged him after office. Fittingly, his story is published under
the titled Burden of Service. The sub-title
Reminiscences of Nigeria’s Former Attorney-General,
underscores the point that Adoke is, remarkably, the first former
Attorney-General of the Federation to publish any account of his
time in office. In addition to the Malabu Oil controversy,
Burden of Service also offers insights into many other
highlights of the Jonathan years, including the hand-over of
Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon, recovery of Abacha Loot, the removal
of Ayo Salami as President of the Court of Appeal, and the
climactic denouement to Nigeria’s 2015 general elections.

Adoke’s telling of his version of the stories packs a punch.
While his parochial account is interesting in and of itself, it is
the vignettes he offers when he is not necessarily pleading his own
case that make Adoke’s account deserving of attention. A general
theme of his is the shiftiness of Nigerian politicians and he
illustrates this with several issues in the book. Five deserve
attention.

The first is the currency of loyalty in Nigerian politics. Under
General Abacha, politicians popularised “I am loyal” as cult
greeting. It is not lost on those who are interested that anyone
who has need to repeat affirmations of loyalty in this way probably
knows nothing about loyalty in the first place. Illustrating this
point, Adoke narrates how many people close to President Jonathan
donated money to support the campaign of General Muhammadu Buhari
in 2015. According to him, “many of my cabinet colleagues,
including those known to be close to the President, had made
donations to Buhari’s campaign. Those involved included heads of
agencies. A Principal Officer of the National Assembly from the PDP
was to later confess publicly that he donated N5 million to the APC
during the elections.”

This shiftiness is not limited to politics; it also extends to
high matters of constitutional legality. This is the second
highlight from Burden of Service. Adoke tells a remarkable
story about the fate of the Constitution (Fourth Amendment) Bill of
2015, which was said to have failed to receive presidential assent
before President Jonathan vacated office. The amendment included
clauses granting immunity to law-makers, life pension to former
presiding officers of the National Assembly and inducting them into
life membership of the National Council of State. It also contained
a provision dispensing with presidential assent to constitutional
amendments. As Adoke tells it, after the 2015 election, the
National Assembly transmitted the Bill to the President for his
assent. By the time Adoke learnt of this, President Jonathan had
reportedly assented to the bill and authorized for this to be
returned to the National Assembly. The President’s Senior Special
Assistant on Administration, Matt Aikihionbare, confirmed this. So,
Adoke raced to the presidency to explain to the President the
dangers inherent in the provisions contained in the amendment he
assented to. After his encounter with President Jonathan, “the
President looked genuinely surprised and promptly withdrew his
assent”, whereupon he directed the Attorney-General “to prepare a
memorandum elucidating all the issues…. raised and why he would
have to veto the bill.” The rest is history but an important
constitutional question arises – can a president having assented to
a law unilaterally withdraw his assent?

Thirdly, there is the issue of weaponisation of litigation
against the public purse in judgment debts. It’s best to render
this in Adoke’s own words: “Many of the claims were bogus but since
it was an organized scam, they were getting away with it…. Again,
there were too many people interested in judgment debts. We were
getting calls from all manner of people, including members of the
National Assembly. Actually, some National Assembly members were
making appropriation for judgment debts based on an understanding
with the debtors (sic). It was a conspiracy against the
national treasury.” This does not require any translation but it
would have been useful if Attorney-General Adoke could tell who
“they” were.

At a time when they are being abused to intimidate and persecute
critics of government, Adoke, fourthly, offers insights into the
context and justifications for the Terrorism Prevention Act (TPA)
and Cybercrimes Act, both adopted under his watch as
Attorney-General. In addition to the clear and present threat of
Boko Haram, the rationale for the former was the need to implement
the treaty framework of international co-operation on terrorism to
which Nigeria had subscribed. Concerning the latter, the goal was
to “ensure the protection of critical national information
infrastructure and to promote cybersecurity… intellectual property
and privacy rights.” Today, sadly, these laws have been turned into
instruments for pursuit of regime opponents, more imagined than
real.

Fifth, there is the matter of plea bargains in white collar
crimes involving politically exposed persons (PEPs) in Nigeria.
About this, Adoke tells the story of the presidential pardon
granted former Bayelsa State Governor, Diprieye Alamieyeseigha.
According to him, Alamieyeseigha’s conviction was under a plea
bargain and “as part of the plea bargain he was to be granted
presidential pardon by (President Umaru) Yar’Adua after his release
from jail. This, however, did not materialize as President Yar’Adua
fell ill and died.” Plea bargains are subject to approval by courts
and it’s doubtful whether this part of the deal was disclosed to
any court. It certainly wasn’t disclosed to Nigerians.

As Attorney-General of the Federation, Adoke was also the
official leader of the legal profession. His memoir offers an
unusual insight into how he views hierarchies at the Bar. To make
this point, he tells the story of how, before his time, “a
substantial part of the budgetary allocation made for solicitors’
fees was being paid out only to two or three private solicitors.
There was a case of a former Attorney-General that as paying a
Senior Advocate N50 million for each case….” The result was there
was insufficient money to go round, so many of the cases against
government went un-defended, leading to more judgment debts. So,
how did Adoke address this? He decided that “no SAN would be paid
more than N5 million for a brief; any other lawyer, who was not a
SAN, would receive a maximum of N2 million.” In the un-complicated
calculus of Attorney-General Adoke, a SAN is worth 250% of the
non-SAN!

Burden of Service is replete with claims of moral high
ground and completeness of disclosure. As with all memoirs,
however, it’s up to the reader to determine what weight to accord
to the author’s account. In telling the story of the removal of Ayo
Salami as the President of the Court of Appeal, for instance, Adoke
prefaces his narration with the implicit disclaimer that “the
Attorney-General is not a member of the National Judicial Council
(NJC)”, who recommended the retirement of Salami. He then proceeds
to a pro-forma narration that is half-hearted to the point
of being clearly disingenuous. By Adoke’s own admission, Chief
Justice Katsina-Alu, who was the other party in this terminal
dog-fight with Salami, was his “mentor and adopted father” and
benefactor, who personally recommended him to President Jonathan
for the position of Attorney-General. Salami for his part “had
personally encouraged” Adoke to apply for SAN. In the sub-text,
Chief Justice Katsina-Alu was family to Adoke and it is difficult
to escape the conclusion that in this part of the book, at least,
he was less than economical with the truth.

Co-Convenor of Nigeria Mourns, Odinkalu
works with the Open Society Foundations.