News Editor
RIBADU Stockholm, Sweden | April 2026
Mallam Ribadu, I address you as the son of Chief Godfrey Kio Jaja Amachree QC — Nigeria’s first Solicitor-General, the UN’s first African Under-Secretary-General, and General Gowon’s personal envoy to Washington during the Civil War. My grandfather sat at the 1958 Constitutional Conference. I was mentored by Alhaji Shinkafi and General Katsina. I know this country. I know its law. And I have questions that the law requires you to answer.
ON GILBERT CHAGOURY:You said it yourself — “you couldn’t investigate corruption without looking at Chagoury.” You tried to arrest him at a Nigerian airfield in 2004. He was tipped off and fled. A Swiss court convicted him of money laundering. The United States has formally designated him a Hezbollah financier under 8 U.S.C. § 1189. He remains under active US and Israeli intelligence surveillance.
Yet in 2026, this man receives Nigerian police escorts. He holds the GCON — our second highest national honour. His group wins government contracts without competitive tender, in breach of the Public Procurement Act 2007. He is treated like a head of state.
Under Section 15(5) of the Constitution, the State must abolish corrupt practices. Under the Terrorism (Prevention) Act 2011, facilitating designated terrorist financiers is a criminal offence. Under UNCAC Article 5, no one is above the anti-corruption mandate. Who authorised this man’s impunity, Mallam Ribadu? And what have you done about it?
ON THE ST. JOHN’S WOOD PROPERTY:In June 2016, a Federal High Court granted the EFCC a forfeiture order over assets belonging to Kola Aluko — a fugitive accused of a $1.6 billion fraud involving Diezani Alison-Madueke. One of those assets: a £9 million mansion in St. John’s Wood, London.
That forfeiture order was still in force when, in October 2017, a BVI offshore shell company called Aranda Overseas Corporation — controlled by Oluwaseyi Tinubu, the President’s son, since 2011 — purchased the property through Deutsche Bank. The President subsequently used it as his London residence. Senior politicians visited him there.
Under Section 28 of the EFCC Act, forfeiture-ordered assets cannot be privately transferred without court authorisation. Under UK POCA Section 329, acquiring property suspected to be proceeds of crime is a money laundering offence. Under UNCAC Article 51, Nigeria must pursue stolen asset recovery.
Has the EFCC investigated this transaction under the current administration? If not — why not?
ON RIVERS STATE — MY FATHER’S STATE: Rivers State exists because my father helped create it. The March 2025 State of Emergency does not meet the constitutional threshold of Section 305. The Wike-Fubara conflict is a manufactured crisis, and the Federal Government is a partisan actor within it. Wike’s televised threat against journalist Seun Okinbaloye violates the Nigerian Press Council Act, the Cybercrimes Act 2015, and UNESCO Resolution 29/C38 on journalist safety.
Journalists and activists are being detained without charge, in breach of Sections 35, 36, and 39 of the Constitution and Articles 9 and 19 of the ICCPR. Your silence on all of this is not neutrality. It is complicity.
ON WHO YOU WERE — AND WHO YOU HAVE BECOME: You once pursued Chagoury across borders. You jailed the Inspector-General of Police. You made governors tremble. Now you use the apparatus of state to chase opposition politicians through airports while the President’s son’s offshore property transactions go unexamined and a Swiss-convicted terrorism financier collects state honours.
Transparency International said it plainly in 2023: “The same people he referred to as looters, he is interacting with them.”
That is not national security. That is the weaponisation of the state for the protection of power.
I formally demand, within 30 days: — Public answers to the Chagoury questions — ONSA review of his contracts, escorts, and the GCON award — Full legal accounting for the Rivers State emergency — EFCC referral on t
