On 15 July, a Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the final forfeiture of 48 properties linked to Abubakar Malami, the former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. The properties, valued at roughly N180.4bn, include hotels, a university, malls and residential houses spread across Abuja, Kaduna, Kano and Birnin-Kebbi. Government officials and party loyalists have been quick to hail the ruling as proof that the Tinubu administration is serious about fighting corruption.
There is something about that narrative that needs to be examined dispassionately. Malami has not been convicted of anything. Forfeiture under Nigeria’s Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It only requires “reasonable suspicion” that the property in question was acquired through unlawful means, and it is the property, not the person, that is on trial. Judge Joyce Abdulmalik was clear about this when she noted that the question before her was not who owns the properties, but how legitimate the money used to buy them was. That is a meaningful legal finding. It is not a guilty verdict.
To be fair to the process, it was not a one-sided exercise. The EFCC had asked the court to forfeit 57 properties worth over N212bn. The judge released nine of them, ruling that the commission had not established a clear link between those specific assets and any unlawful activity. Suspicion alone was not enough for her, and mere association with Malami did not automatically taint a property. That is an important point to note. A court that rejects a fifth of the government’s own request is not simply rubber-stamping the EFCC’s case, and anyone writing about this fairly should note that.
But the scale of what remains is still significant. In a separate case, Malami and his family are facing trial over an alleged N8.7bn money-laundering scheme. Therefore, there is a real, ongoing legal process here, not just a civil technicality. The focus of this column is not to pretend that nothing happened. It is to ask why the same legal distinction, forfeiture without conviction, gets treated so differently depending on who it is attached to.
Consider President Bola Tinubu himself. In 1993, a US federal court ordered the forfeiture of $460,000 held by Tinubu in a Chicago bank account in a case tied to a heroin-trafficking investigation. For years, this fact has surfaced in Nigerian political debates, and each time, his defenders have offered the same response: it was a civil proceeding, not a criminal case, and he was never convicted of anything in the United States. Nigeria’s presidential election tribunal accepted that argument in 2023 and found no credible evidence of a criminal conviction.
That defence is legally sound. Civil forfeiture is different from a criminal conviction, and it is fair to point that out. But if it is fair when raised about Tinubu, it should be equally fair when raised about Malami. You cannot insist that forfeiture proves nothing when it touches your own principal and then turn around to treat forfeiture as a corruption conviction when it touches your political opponent. It is either the distinction matters, or it does not. Pick one and apply it consistently.
The same issue rears its head regarding Femi Gbajabiamila, the Chief of Staff to the President. Gbajabiamila was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia in the United States in 2001.
In 2007, Georgia’s Supreme Court suspended him for three years after he admitted to taking $25,000 from a client. In 2015, he was suspended again for five years after a client filed a theft complaint against him. Finally, in 2020, his law licence was permanently terminated after he stopped responding to the bar and paying his membership fees. None of that is a Nigerian criminal conviction either. A group defending him has disputed the fraud framing entirely, claiming he simply stopped practising law in Georgia because he returned home to serve his constituency, not because of any wrongdoing. In the spirit of balance, that defence deserves to be mentioned, even if the Georgia Bar’s own disciplinary records tell a more detailed story.
Therefore, this is where the double standard can be seen. Malami’s forfeiture, achieved through a legal standard that falls well short of criminal proof, is being presented as evidence of a corruption fight. Tinubu’s own forfeiture, achieved through a similar civil process, is dismissed as legally meaningless. Gbajabiamila’s disciplinary record is waved away as a distraction from real work. Three different men, three forfeiture or disciplinary outcomes that stop short of criminal conviction, and three completely different reactions depending on which side of the political fence each man sits on.
This is not new in Nigeria. Since independence in 1960, allegations of massive diversion of public resources have followed nearly every administration, military or civilian, regardless of party or region. But the response to all that looting has been consistently selective. Officials in the good books of whoever holds power rarely face real scrutiny. Officials who fall out of favour, or who belong to the wrong political camp, suddenly become the face of an anti-corruption crackdown. Nigerians have seen this movie under Obasanjo, under Buhari, and now under Tinubu. The EFCC’s credibility problem has never really been about whether it can win cases but about who it chooses to pursue and when.
Another point in all of this is one that Nigerians are often reluctant to examine honestly. Many citizens do not judge politicians primarily on evidence of wrongdoing. They evaluate them first through the lens of ethnicity, religion or political affiliation. A politician accused of corruption from one’s own region or faith gets defended passionately, while the same allegations against a politician from a rival region or faith are treated as self-evidently true. This creates a strange contradiction. Nigerians say they want the country to succeed, yet many are willing to shield themselves from accountability in ways that make national progress harder to achieve. Wanting Nigeria to become great while defending indefensible conduct simply because the person accused shares your region or faith is plain national sabotage dressed up as loyalty.
None of this is a call to declare Malami, Tinubu or Gbajabiamila guilty of anything they have not been convicted of. Due process is very important, and it should be extended to political opponents exactly as generously as it is extended to political allies. That is the standard currently missing. The real question Nigerians should be asking is not whether Malami’s properties were legitimately acquired, a matter the courts are still reviewing. It is whether the people currently celebrating his forfeiture, while shrugging off comparable questions about their own colleagues, have any moral authority to lead a genuine fight against corruption at all.
When will Nigeria stop having leaders who are linked to one scandal or another? When will Nigerians stop defending those with questionable backgrounds because of ethnic, religious or political affiliations? When will Nigerians stop putting the interests of their ethnicity, religion or political party above those of the country? When will the wealth of the country be directed to the use of the people rather than those holding political offices?
Finally, what would honest, non-selective enforcement actually look like in Nigeria? Perhaps the day EFCC pursues an ally with the same energy it pursues an opponent is the day Nigerians can start taking the phrase “fighting corruption” at face value.
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