By Olabode Opeseitan
In the scholarly realm of Islamic edification, the name “Malami” evokes nobility, honor, and the didactic grace of those who teach not merely for livelihood but for legacy. It is a name that connotes the transmission of knowledge as sacred duty.
So when Abubakar Malami, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, ascended to the exalted office of Attorney-General of the Federation in 2015, on the coattails of Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption mandate, there was a flicker of hope.
Perhaps this Malami, by name and by training, would restore the moral grandeur of a ministry once stewarded by eminent jurists like Teslim Elias and Bola Ajibola. Perhaps the law would again be a place of national repair.
Instead, what followed was a desecration.
Malami did not merely lower the bar of the office he held; he bent it so far out of shape that the silhouette of Attorney-General no longer resembled the moral institution envisioned at independence.
In a country struggling to reconstitute its conscience after decades of military rule and elite impunity, the chief law officer should have been a fulcrum of renewal. Malami became something else: a political fixer in silk, a custodian of the law who treated legality as a costume worn for effect rather than a discipline internalized.
Senior advocates and civil society lawyers described a tenure defined by selective prosecution, whimsical obedience to court orders, and a Ministry of Justice increasingly entangled in partisan battles. Even those who once defended him on ideological grounds began to speak, in muted bar associations and panel discussions, of an AGF who blurred the line between law and politics to the point of erasure.
The allegations now confronting Malami, brought into sharp focus by his detention by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, are not merely about personal enrichment. They are about the corrosion of the very idea that the law could serve as Nigeria’s last honest language.
EFCC investigators have reportedly outlined 18 alleged offences, ranging from money laundering and abuse of office to terrorism financing and the irregular handling of recovered public funds.
Among the most damning are three emblematic cases. First, the Abacha loot. Malami’s office rejected a proposal by Swiss lawyer Enrico Monfrini, who had previously helped recover billions, in favour of local counsel on a 5 percent success fee. The result was duplicated legal costs and opacity around the 322.5-million-dollars repatriated from Switzerland and Jersey.
Second, the Ajaokuta Steel settlement. Malami authorized a 496-million-dollar payment to Global Steel Holdings Ltd, nine years after the Indian firm had reportedly waived all claims. A dead claim, resurrected and monetized.
Third, the alleged diversion of 4-billion-naira from the Central Bank’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, now under EFCC scrutiny.
These were not isolated lapses. They formed part of a pattern. The sale of forfeited assets worth billions of naira. The 419-million-dollar Paris Club judgment debt. Each transaction, a vignette in the slow unraveling of institutional integrity.
Malami’s camp insists he is the victim of a politicized inquisition. He denies all charges, including terrorism financing, and frames his bail revocation as punishment for attending a political gathering in Kebbi, an act he argues is protected by the constitution.
The EFCC has countered his claim and provided documents to show he breached the terms of his bail. He will have his day in court but the question remains: what does a republic owe itself in the caliber of the person entrusted with its legal soul?
The tragedy is not merely that Malami failed. It is that he helped animate the very cynicism he was meant to dispel. Under his watch, prosecutorial discretion became a lever of factional power. International anti-corruption commitments were filtered through the lens of domestic patronage. And the Ministry of Justice, once a temple of the republic’s moral aspirations, became a marketplace. Its altars auctioned. Its incense replaced by the smoke of backroom deals. Its silence bought by proximity to power.
Malami is, surely, entitled to due process. But Nigeria, too, is entitled to truth, to institutional memory, and to the resolve that never again will the guardian of its justice system be allowed to treat the nation’s moral energy as a resource to be mined rather than a legacy to be protected.
That resolve must be constitutional, not rhetorical. It must include enforceable limits on executive overreach, a more assertive Bar, a judiciary that speaks even when it cannot rule, and a civil society that refuses to be seduced.
As Reinhold Niebuhr warned, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” When a nation fails to enforce consequences, it does not merely tolerate decay. It institutionalizes it.
Opeseitan, a strategic communicator and business development expert, was Globacom’s Director of Public Relations
