There is, in the slow theatre of Nigerian public life, a certain grim poetry in watching men eventually take up residence inside the very machinery they once so enthusiastically operated. The case of former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami is not merely ironic; it is jurisprudentially instructive. It is the state, having been bent into a cudgel, discovering too late, that cudgels have no memory of former masters. For eight years, Malami presided over Nigeria’s legal architecture with the solemn air of a man convinced that law was less a system of restraint than a convenient instrument of deployment. He did not invent executive overreach; that would be too generous. But he refined it, laundered it through legalese, and, most consequentially, normalized it. Now the same apparatus, its gears still oiled by precedent and impunity, turns toward him. The astonishment, one suspects, is not that it does so, but that it has done so with comparatively polite restraint.
In the long annals of Nigerian statecraft, few spectacles are as darkly instructive as watching a former Attorney General discover the sharp edges of the very machinery he once oiled. Malami, who for eight years presided over the justice system with the serene confidence of a man convinced that the law was whatever he said it was, now finds himself entangled in the coils of the EFCC and the DSS. Some observers have noted the irony. Others have called it karma. Students of political history might prefer a more precise term: institutional vengeance. When Sambo Dasuki, former National Security Adviser (NSA) was arrested in 2015, the episode quickly mutated from prosecution into something far more unsettling: a demonstration of how thoroughly the executive could ignore the judiciary without consequence. And presiding over this juridical pantomime was Malami, the nation’s chief law officer, who might have been expected, under a more traditional understanding of the role; to defend the integrity of the courts. Instead, he performed the more innovative function of explaining why court orders need not be obeyed.
Malami was no ordinary minister. He was the Buhari administration’s chief legal architect, the custodian of its prosecutorial zeal, and critics frequently argued, the quiet engineer of its most controversial legal maneuvers. He was the man who supervised the prosecution of Dasuki, whose detention became a global case study in executive lawlessness. He was the man who, according to public commentary at the time, appeared to treat court orders as polite suggestions rather than binding commands. And he was the man who, in a VOA interview, claimed that Dasuki had killed 100,000 people; a figure so fantastical that it later required a formal retraction before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee. Now, as Malami sits across the table from the very agencies he once directed, Nigeria confronts a question as old as the Leviathan itself: how do you tame a monster built in your own image?
The Dasuki Precedent: A Case Study in Executive Hubris
Dasuki’s arrest in 2015, barely a day after handing over office, was the opening act in a drama that would stretch for more than four years. He was charged with money laundering and the alleged diversion of arms procurement funds. Yet what followed was not a trial in the conventional sense, but a prolonged demonstration of state power unconstrained by judicial oversight. Four different courts granted Dasuki bail. He met every condition. Each time, he was re arrested at the prison gates. Even the ECOWAS Court ordered his release. It made no difference. The Buhari administration, with Malami as its chief legal officer, insisted that national security trumped judicial authority. Buhari himself declared on live television that Dasuki would not be released regardless of court orders. This was not merely a legal dispute. It was a constitutional rupture, which normalized the idea that the executive could detain citizens indefinitely without trial.
The tragedy of the Malami era was not that it broke rules; governments do that with tiresome regularity. It was that it redefined the rules themselves. Three particularly pernicious precedents were established: First, judicial orders became negotiable. Court rulings were treated as advisory opinions rather than binding commands. The message was unmistakable: legality was contingent on executive approval. Second, security became a universal alibi. “National security” evolved into a talismanic phrase capable of dissolving constitutional guarantees. Habeas corpus, due process, and basic rights were all rendered subordinate to a concept never clearly defined and never meaningfully challenged. Third, media trials became state policy. The EFCC and DSS developed a taste for prosecuting reputations with media convictions, where allegations were broadcast with theatrical flourish long before any judge had weighed the evidence. In this environment, the rule of law did not collapse dramatically; it eroded administratively, and became a matter of executive discretion.
The Malami Doctrine: Power Without Restraint
Public commentary during Malami’s tenure often described him as the most powerful Attorney General since the return to civilian rule. He was, after all, the custodian of the state’s prosecutorial machinery. But critics argued that he wielded this machinery with a troubling elasticity. And the already fragile justice system, became increasingly dependent on the whims of the executive. This was the Frankenstein problem: a system built to serve the state, but increasingly shaped to serve the preferences of those who controlled it.
And now, enter the present. Malami, having exited office, finds himself the subject of investigation by the same agencies whose excesses he once justified with such doctrinal enthusiasm. Malami faces allegations ranging from corruption to illegal possession of firearms. He has been questioned by the EFCC and the DSS. His properties have been searched. His associates have been interrogated. But something curious has happened. He has been granted bail, allowed legal representation, spared the indignity of perpetual re-arrest, and largely shielded from the fevered media vilification that once accompanied such proceedings. In short, he is being treated, one hesitates to say it, with a degree of procedural decency. No re arrests. No presidential declarations. No defiance of court orders. No media circus. The contrast with Dasuki is not merely stark; it is almost embarrassing. One is tempted to ask: where was this newfound commitment to due process when Malami himself held the levers of power? Whatever one thinks of the current administration, it has not repeated the excesses of its predecessor. But the deeper question remains: what happens when the architect of a system built on discretionary power becomes subject to that same system?
The Institutional Reckoning
Nigeria now confronts a dilemma: how to restore the rule of law without descending into vengeance. If Malami is to be prosecuted, it must be done through the very institutions he once desecrated; through the same due process he denied Dasuki. This is not about Malami the individual. It is about Nigeria. If Nigeria responds to past abuses with new abuses, the cycle continues. If it responds with institutional integrity, the cycle breaks. The real challenge is not punishing Malami. It is taming the monster he helped create. The monster is not the EFCC or the DSS. It is not the Ministry of Justice. It is not even the presidency. The monster is the idea, deeply embedded during the Buhari years, that the law is a tool of the executive rather than a constraint upon it. This is the monster that must be tamed.
Taming the monster requires more than prosecuting a former Attorney General. It requires reasserting judicial authority; reforming the security agencies; clarifying the powers of the Attorney General; ending media trials, and revisiting past abuses. The case of Dasuki and other victims must be formally reviewed; not to punish the past, but to prevent its repetition. There is a certain poetic symmetry in Malami’s predicament. He once stood at the apex of a system that treated judicial authority as an inconvenience. Now he must rely on that same system for protection. He once argued that national security justified indefinite detention. Now he must hope that the courts he once sidelined will uphold his rights. This is not karma. It is the inevitable consequence of building institutions around individuals rather than principles. There is an understandable temptation to treat Malami’s predicament as poetic justice. After all, the symmetry is irresistible: the prosecutor becomes the accused; the architect of overreach encounters its consequences. But moral satisfaction is a poor substitute for institutional reform. If Malami is denied due process, Nigeria learns nothing. It merely repeats the cycle with a different protagonist. If, however, he receives the full protections of the law; protections he once helped erode, then something more meaningful occurs: the system begins, however tentatively, to correct itself.
Conclusion: The Lesson Nigeria Cannot Ignore
Malami’s ordeal is not, in the end, about Malami. It is about whether Nigeria can extricate itself from a jurisprudence of convenience and return to a jurisprudence of principle. For eight years, the machinery of state prosecution was wielded with exuberance directed at opponents, justified by necessity, and insulated from scrutiny. Now that machinery has found a new subject. The question is not whether it will operate. It always does. The question is whether, this time, it will operate within the bounds of law. Nigeria has a rare opportunity. It can use Malami’s case to demonstrate that the rule of law applies to all; even those who once wielded the law as a weapon, because justice is not a weapon to be deployed, but a standard to be upheld. The choice is not about Malami. It is about the Republic. For if Nigeria fails to tame the monster now, it may soon find that the monster has learned to live without its creator; and no one, not even its former custodians, remains beyond its reach.
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