Professor of law and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, has berated the Presidency over its coordinated response to remarks made by the Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja, Cardinal John Onaiyekan, following the Catholic bishops’ meeting with President Bola Tinubu, describing the deployment of presidential spokespersons against the revered cleric as “beyond stupid.”
![](https://thenigerialawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ELLAN.png")
![](https://thenigerialawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-Summer-IDRI-Masterclass.jpg")
Odinkalu stated this during a radio interview on the Daily Digest with Jimi Disu on Thursday, where he also delivered a sweeping assessment of the state of the nation, covering the President’s controversial credentials, the capacity of the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct a credible election in 2027, the fear pervading senior public officials, and what he described as the collapse of independent adjudication in the Nigerian judiciary.
Reacting to the fallout of the Catholic bishops’ visit to the President, Odinkalu said the news was not the meeting itself but what transpired after it.
He said, “It’s routine for the president to meet whomsoever he wishes to meet with, and I think the news really is not the meeting but what transpired after the meeting. And I do not understand whose idea it was for the presidency to set attack dogs after Cardinal Onaiyekan. I really can’t understand what their intent or design was or whose brilliant idea that was, because that was beyond stupid, and I’m not going to try and pull punches about that. It was absolutely beyond stupid.
“The meeting had finished. By the way, Cardinal Onaiyekan was the senior most cleric in that delegation, although the president of the CBCN was there. He was the senior most cleric and he was simply offering an impression about what transpired. What then followed was inexplicable, the release from every possible spokesperson in the presidency. I’m not going to say I would necessarily think I would have agreed with even one release, but to have every talking head, every mouth, every set of mandibles in the entire pack going after him, and all manner of other people in the payroll and media empire of the president. That was inexplicable.
“You’ve got to understand, Onaiyekan is not running for office. He does not even have a current clerical or ecclesiastical province to run. He’s retired as an archbishop. Obviously, cardinal is for life. And so the whole thing became entirely unwarranted. There was nothing he said that was not on TV.”
On the argument by presidential aides that the Cardinal breached the confidentiality of the meeting, the law professor said, “That point about confidentiality is even stupider than going after him. By the way, confidentiality is an entire area in the field of law. There is a law of confidence, and the common law rules on confidentiality are quite clear and do not in any way impinge on the issues that came up or the manner of conversation that took place in the encounter that the bishops had with the president.
“So the effort to bring in the idea of confidentiality was fairly straightforward, to shut down any conversation about what took place in order to preserve just one version of what took place, which is the presidency’s version. And that really is the tragedy about this, that we now have a presidency that is unwilling to hear any other version other than what it wants. And when you say that they want a one-party state, they bristle at that. But that is quite clear. There is only one narrative that is acceptable to them and that is the narrative of the presidency.”
Asked whether the conciliatory reaction of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who said the government would work with the Catholic mission and all groups, had settled the matter, Odinkalu said the intervention could not be forgiven.
He said, “No, no, no. It cannot be forgiven. First of all, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, by the way, is also a practicing Catholic. But what he is doing is basically, it’s too little too late, in one word. Now, they had tried bullying, they tried huckstering, they attempted disinformation, a bit of forgery, none of which worked. Every one of which drew escalating blowback. And now they are trying this, and this is desperate.
“It suggests of course that they now may be realizing that they’ve lost the narrative on this, but even worse, it is beginning to look to them as if the political fallout in the run-up to the election could be quite substantial.”
Analysing the political landscape, Odinkalu said, “Every winning electoral platform is a coalition. It’s a coalition of disparate interests, and somebody has got to hold that together. Now, what is happening is that the president’s coalition is looking, at the moment at least, not together, and they are acting as if they do not need votes to win, even rigged votes.
“First of all, he does not have the confidence with his northwest votes that he did, and the northwest is the most assuredly Sunni Muslim constituency in the country. That part of his coalition, which is about 29% of the electoral votes in the country, is at the moment very short. They are not comfortable with him, for whatever the reason is. That’s number one. The Catholics represent about 35 million of the country in terms of population. If you then add other Christians, particularly other people in the traditional Christian church, looking at this and wondering, given the context of the so-called Muslim-Muslim ticket, you begin to see that the political costs of this are fairly substantial. That is what I suspect they’re looking at. And mind you, the middle belt is also not very happy with the killings going on in the middle belt and the fact that the president has not shown up.
“So when you look at this, his electoral coalition is looking very frayed and very stretched. They’re looking at this, and somebody like the SGF, who himself is a very practiced politician, is looking at this and thinking these talking heads are going to cost us an election, and therefore he’s trying to tone things down. Well, when you’re running against a Cardinal, what do you expect?”
On the controversy over the President’s credentials and forms submitted for elections, Odinkalu said the issue went beyond electoral eligibility to the character of the nation.
He said, “A lot of people worry about the consequences of that for the electoral process and for electoral eligibility. I worry about the bigger picture, what it says about our country. We want to teach students, we want to teach young people that honesty matters, integrity is important. We want to teach young people that Yahoo Yahoo is a crime and you’ve got to try and avoid it. Now, how do you do that in a country in which your president cannot tell one story about himself that checks out? Who are you? Where are you from? Who are your parents? What schools did you go to?
“Now, we’re not even asking you to produce evidence of this. We are asking you to just tell the story so that somebody will say, ‘Yes, I went to school with this dude. We come from the same village.’ People want to be proud to say the president is from my village. I mean, it is really that basic. The president went to our school, and so we have an old students’ homecoming and the president shows up or the president sends a donation. That is how you foster communities, and we come from a part of the world in which communities matter because institutions don’t work. So your community is your emergency institution. Your memories matter. They are part of your identity.
“So the fact of who this is, is really more fundamental than filling out election forms. This is about who we are. If you do not need any of those basic things to be able to become the president, how do we persuade young people that you need to go to school to be anything in life? This is really what it’s about. And this is why all the people who have promoted this career and this path to the highest political office in the land, who have enabled it over the years, must and will always have questions to answer. They have something huge on their conscience. I don’t think we should leave this alone.
“Why is it so difficult to say what primary school the president went to and what secondary school he went to? And the Supreme Court is one of those institutions that has enabled this.”
Tracing the history, he said, “At independence, we knew what every person did who was in a major position of leadership. We knew who they were. We knew what schools they went to. We knew how they came into politics and into public service. In 1979, we had five presidential candidates, and whatever you may have thought about those men, if they opened their mouths you knew they were committed to public service, whether or not you agreed with their platforms.
“Here we are, and we have a president whose nationality we do not know, because he carried a Guinean diplomatic passport; whose parentage, whose genealogy we do not know, and we now understand that President Buhari thought the same thing too; whose primary school we do not know, whose secondary school we do not know, and who now claims to have gone to university.
“If he was homeschooled, as Festus Keyamo SAN famously posited, then they should say so. Homeschooled should be disclosed, and homeschooled does not mean you don’t have a certificate. Homeschool is a preparatory process; after that you go forward for certification. But the thing is that he had claimed Government College in previous forms and he had claimed other things that proved false, and now they are trying to make up records or to clean up records in order to align with a current eligibility threshold. How do you not go through primary and secondary certification but you have a university degree?”
Asked directly about the legality of a nomination form with blank spaces, Odinkalu said, “You see, the problem we have is this: I no longer indulge in legalities in Nigeria, because the people who administer our law have lost a sense of compass and a sense of indignation. We manufacture one standard of law for the president and another standard of law for a poor student who is applying for the joint matriculation process.
“If a student applying to go into the university system presented that kind of form, the answer to your question will be fairly straightforward. It does not require a lot of imagination. But if a person seeking to lead the country presents that kind of form, he will be accompanied by the most expensive senior advocates in the country telling the Supreme Court that that is exactly the right thing to do. And you will have the Supreme Court giving you reasons why that is the right thing to do and why that is tolerable. And that is beyond disgraceful.”
Asked whether he agreed with the viral remark credited to Professor Pat Utomi that the present days are worse than the Abacha era, Odinkalu said, “I tend to agree, which is worse than ironic, given that the president’s claim to fame is that he fought the Abacha dispensation as a pro-democracy activist. And it’s not just him, it’s quite a few people in his retinue, including for instance Bayo Onanuga, who credits himself with having started off a brand of journalism known as guerrilla journalism. Now, how we go from those reputations and indeed credentials to where we are now, only a soothsayer can tell.
“This is just what happens on my own phones. I get people who are very close to power, and I’m talking about people holding very senior elective office and appointive office, up to the level of governors, who will call me and say, you know, thank you for saying things we cannot say. And I’m like, what can’t you say? What exactly can you not say? A society in which senior citizens and senior public officers are now so afraid that they cannot tell the truth to their own children is frightening.
“And I have the same set of people who will come around and say, are you not afraid for your life? And I say, afraid for my life? How? I’ve not collected a dime from the government. I’m not interested in collecting a dime from them. I’m not asking them to pay for my things. I am just saying what affects me and my community and my family, and I should be afraid for that? If I get to the point where I become afraid for that, then I’m no longer living. I’m already dead. But this is the society in which we now are, that the kind of fear that you saw in the Abacha years is back, and is back with a vengeance. And that’s frightening and chastening as well.”
On the possibility of change in the 2027 elections, Odinkalu said the forthcoming Osun governorship election would give Nigerians a foretaste, before delivering a damning verdict on the electoral commission.
He said, “As I’ve made it quite clear, I was in school with the current INEC Chairman, and he was my colleague in law school. But I’ve got to be quite honest and plain in saying that I don’t think the current INEC leadership is willing or able or capable of organizing a credible election on the current evidence. On the current evidence, I do not think the current INEC leadership can organize a credible election, or is willing to do so, or cares about doing so.
“Secondly, if an INEC were to be interested in organizing a credible election, they should have been scandalized that it was the president, before the bishops, guaranteeing their neutrality, and he guaranteed their neutrality with the words that he has never intimidated anybody. That should frighten all of us. A credible INEC would have issued a statement at least in clarification or as a follow-up to the president’s declarations before the bishops.
“The presidency, you would think, is a slightly more elevated office than the office of spokesperson of INEC. And to reduce the presidency to the level of an INEC spokesperson guaranteeing or mouthing off about the neutrality of INEC is troubling, very troubling. The fact that INEC has said absolutely nothing in reaction to that should even trouble people a lot more, because the perception that INEC is in the pocket of the presidency richly abounds at the moment in the country, and nobody is making an effort to dissuade people of that perception.”
Recalling history, the former NHRC Chairman said, “Mind you, we’ve been here before. In 2007, President Obasanjo wrote the results of INEC, and I hope he’s listening to this and I hope he can sue me for saying so. INEC was doing collation at that point after the presidential elections in 2007. Go around, there is no result for the 2007 presidential elections.
“Why is that so? In Nigeria, for someone to emerge as winner of the presidential election as a matter of law, you must have won at least 25% in 24 states of the federation, that is two-thirds. In 2007, Maurice Iwu headed to the TV studios to announce the results at the point of the collation of the 13th state. I believe that was Ondo State that was being collated. At that point 12 states had been done, the 13th state was not completed. Maurice Iwu released a result written in the presidency.
“I suspect that in 2027 we could have INEC produce a result manufactured before the contest was finished and collation was completed. That is a script that has happened before; it could happen again.”
On the crowded field of opposition candidates, Odinkalu said, “Every democracy should offer choice to the people, and I think that’s fair. The electoral tendency in Nigeria appears to be towards polarity rather than plurality, although in the last election we had plurality. You had candidate Tinubu marginally ahead of candidates Atiku and Obi. And now we also have exactly the same candidates on the ballot.
“My sense is the administration is disturbed. I do think that their original Plan A was probably to exclude credible candidates from the ballot completely, using the judiciary. And I think that’s the only way the script that’s played out so far makes sense. I suspect they may have slightly backpedalled on that because of the kinds of reactions that have trailed it, and the possibility, I suspect, that they may have got some advice or suggestions that this could provide a basis for a scenario that is not conducive to minimum national stability, that this could actually disturb or enrage the peace of the country.
“So they have slightly backpedalled on that without necessarily withdrawing the legal jeopardy that the parties are in. The most credible platforms, Atiku’s platform in the ADC and Peter Obi’s platform in the NDC, are in the courts. The ADC case has gone through the Court of Appeal at the moment, so we’ll find out whether INEC is going to go to the Supreme Court on that. The NDC is still before the Court of Appeal with its own case, and we’ll find out what happens with that.
“But my sense is they may well allow a contest to take place, and if the numbers for those candidates begin to look credible, they will go back to the court system and return to that Plan A, which is to use the court system to expose those candidates to legal jeopardy and through that retain power.”
Citing precedents, he said, “That is not new. It may not have played out at the national level, but that’s exactly what happened in Zamfara State in 2019, when the winning candidate in the governorship election, who was on the platform of the APC, did not win by a small margin, he won by a vast margin, and the Supreme Court nullified all the votes that went to the winning candidate and installed Matawalle, who came out at about 22% of the votes, as the winner.
“And when we see the crisis in Zamfara State now, it kind of baffles us and we cannot understand: it was authored by the Supreme Court. When you set up as the winner of an election someone who was comprehensively destroyed electorally across the entire state and you expect the state to have peace, it will not have peace. Look at what happened in Imo State, where Hope Uzodinma was set up as the winner of an election in which he was manifestly the loser, and he was not even a close loser. And then people say, ‘Oh, you know, those people are doing insecurity.’ Of course, you’re setting up insecurity when you create as the winner of an election a person who lost.”
On the judiciary and the controversy over houses being built for judges, Odinkalu said, “I like to go back to our recent history, because there are younger people listening to these things, and for them all that they know or see is what is happening before us. In 1991, the Supreme Court justices were accused of having received Mercedes-Benz cars from President Babangida, and they were so enraged, nine of them, including the then Chief Justice Mohammed Bello, sued in defamation to clear their names over that allegation, because they took it seriously.
“As Chief Justice of Nigeria, and I’m going to go on record on this, a Chief Justice of Nigeria collected a Mercedes-Benz car from Wike, who was governor of Rivers State and who had cases before him. And I’m not even talking about the houses now. The ways that some of the senior most people in the judiciary have dragged the judiciary down is beyond disreputable. The current President of the Court of Appeal is accepting an appointment from Wike to chair the IBB golf club in Abuja. That would not have happened a generation ago. Never. It would never have happened. And when you do that, you remove the perception of credible adjudication or independent adjudication.
“And this is even before we get to the issue of the houses and the mansions being built for judges. And this started in Lagos. This model of management of judicial business started in Lagos under the current president when he was governor. So judges were appointed and you were given a house. You had a choice of four locations, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Lekki. You were given an allocation and the state government built it for you and you took it. And from what I can see, that then extended to presiding judges of federal courts who were working in Lagos, because every federal court system has a Lagos judicial division, Court of Appeal, Federal High Court, and the senior justices or judges in those systems appear to have also got that kind of privilege from the Lagos State Government.
“And over time that system then became ‘the norm’ in quotes. And today, the judges of the judicial systems that have not got the kind of mansions that are being put forward by the FCT Minister for the judges in the FCT are all protesting, where are our own mansions? And so the whole idea of independent adjudication and independent court systems is gone.”
Responding to a caller who asked whether he would offer the President a job if Nigeria were his company, Odinkalu said, “I certainly would not offer a job to a person whose identity I cannot verify. That’s fairly straightforward.”
In his parting words, the professor said, “At the end of the day, this is our country. It’s the only country we have actually. I don’t have two passports. And I think the biggest problem I see is there is an active effort to try to divide us, to try to manufacture division amongst Nigerians, and we’ve been through more than enough to see that off.
“My primary home in Nigeria is in Lagos. These days a lot of people who answer Chidi are being buried in Lagos. A lot of them are having their marriages in Lagos. They’re being buried in Abuja, they’re having their marriages in Abuja. They’re being buried in Kano, they’re having their marriages in Kano. You have vast communities from different parts of Nigeria in other parts of Nigeria. In Awka you have a vast Yoruba community. You have a vast Hausa-Fulani community. As a matter of fact, Governor Yahaya Abdulkarim, whom Sokoto State elected in 1991 or 92, was of Awka descent. The country’s history tells me we will see this off too. It may take some effort, and we have a country to build.
“Nigeria is my safe space. People laugh at me when I say this. I spend a lot of time traveling the world, but Nigeria is my safe space, because every day in Nigeria there is somebody who reminds you why being human matters. There is somebody who does something to elevate you, and the person does not have to be a politician. And I think we need to recapture those things that matter to us, those things that bind us, those things that bind our communities. And we’ve got to be honest with ourselves about the things that do not work. And hopefully 2027 will come and we’ll continue to thrive as a people.”
LAWBREED — Equipping You For Greater Success!
_______________________________________________________________________
“Order Justice Omolaye-Ajileye’s Electronic Evidence Books Now” — Essential Guides On Evidence Act, Case Law And Digital Proof
[A MUST HAVE] Evidence Act Demystified With Recent And Contemporary Cases And Materials
Available now for NGN 40,000 at ASC Publications, 10, Boyle Street, Onikan, Lagos. Beside High Court, TBS. Email publications@ayindesanni.com or WhatsApp +2347056667384. Purchase Link: https://paystack.com/buy/evidence-act-complete-annotation
______________________________________________________________________ “Enhance Legal Practice With Authoritative Reports” — Alexander Payne Offers Comprehensive Law Reports, Spanning Over A Century Of Nigerian Jurisprudence
Interested buyers are encouraged to place their orders and enquiries via:
0704 444 4777, 0704 444 4999, 0818 199 9888
Website: www.alexandernigeria.com
The book also examines Nigeria's legal ecosystem, focusing on the LPELR and NBA AI Guidelines. As a bonus, every purchase comes with a FREE eBook titled: How to Use the AI Features in LegalPedia and LawPavilion.
Ohio Books Ltd praises the publication, stating:
"....this is the only Nigerian book I know of on the topic."
How to Order:
📞 Call, Text, or WhatsApp: 08034917063 | 07055285878
📧 Email: benadigwe1@gmail.com
🌎 Website: www.benadigwe.com
Ebook Version: Access it directly online at https://selar.com/prv626
Authored by Ben Ijeoma Adigwe Esq., ACIarb (UK), LL.M, Dip. in Artificial Intelligence, Director at the Delta State Ministry of Justice, Asaba, Nigeria.
