Attorney-General Adoke and the Burden of Memory – By Prof. Chidi A. Odinkalu
‘Burden of Service’ is replete with claims of moral high ground and completeness of disclosure.
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.
…there is the issue of the 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…
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.
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 was paying a Senior Advocate N50 million for each case…” The result was that 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 per cent of the non-SAN!
A Co-Convenor of Nigeria Mourns, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu works with the Open Society Foundations.
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