The federal high court’s decisive decree ordering the absolute asset forfeiture of hundreds of billions linked to the former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, unmasks a terrifying truth for Nigeria’s political elite: the clock of justice ticks at a glacial pace, but its strike is lethal. This historic judicial hammer, routing out decades of hidden commonwealth, stands as a prophetic declaration written in the ink of modern jurisprudence. It proves that for powerful public officeholders who plunder the treasury, the recovery of stolen assets is a harrowing memento mori for those currently intoxicated by state power, signposting the fact that impunity possesses an expiration date, the long arm of the state remembers every hidden ledger, and the total reclamation of the people’s commonwealth from corrupt public officials remains merely a patient matter of time, writes Alex Ekuma
Power is not a fortress. It is a violent, rushing river. In his masterwork The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli warned that Fortuna (the capricious goddess of fate) governs half of human actions, leaving the other half to be conquered only by ruthless, adaptive skill.
For eight long, uninterrupted years, Abubakar Malami, SAN, former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, might have lived under the delusion that he had successfully chained this river. As Nigeria’s longest-serving AGF, Malami operated not merely as a minister, but as a sovereign legal oracle.
