Chidi Odinkalu and the art of peddling lies

BY MUYIWA ADEKEYE  

Chidi Odinkalu has been consistent in peddling falsehoods about Malam Nasir el-Rufai. He has demonstrated a most cavalier approach to facts concerning a man with whom he is obviously obsessed, as again manifested in his most recent diatribe published in The Cable on 1 June 2025.

Like many who trifle with significant matters for their own narrow agendas, Odinkalu lied again about the circumstances that led to the unfortunate demise of His Highness, Dr. Raphael Maiwada Galadima, the Agwam Adara. The facts of the matter and the circumstances of this sad event could not be farther from the fiction that Odinkalu has been retailing with what looks like macabre pleasure over the years. Odinkalu’s preference for conspiracy theory cannot displace the fact that the late Agwam Adara did not attend and was not coming from a meeting with then Governor el-Rufai and certainly did not accompany Malam Nasir el-Rufai on any commiseration visit to Kasuwan Magani. Indeed, the then Governor interacted with him only during the regular meetings with the State Council of Chiefs. To hold on consistently to falsehood does not alter its essence as a blatant lie.

On 19th October 2018, His Highness, Dr. Galadima was kidnapped on the highway to Kachia along with his wife, Mrs. Victoria Galadima, after his car was attacked by armed men. The royal father was returning from Kaduna where he had attended a send forth ceremony held for a niece of his. The abductors released Mrs. Galadima a few hours later but held on to the monarch whom they killed after a week. News of the killing of the monarch, and the gruesome circumstances, had immediate consequences for law and order, requiring the Kaduna State Government to declare a curfew on Friday, 26th October 2018, on the advice of the security agencies.

The tension and agitation that accompanied the grief and sadness at the royal father’s death were fuelled by the lie spread on social media and in sections of the press immediately after the monarch’s abduction that he was kidnapped while returning from a specific meeting with the Governor. That is the false tale that Odinkalu has repeated in his latest opinion piece, reflecting his rejection of facts that do not fit his warped narrative. Nigeria clearly does not have to look across the oceans for denizens of falsehood who believe that lies can be passed off as truth once they are repeatedly designated as alternative facts.

The testimonies of two eyewitnesses when the abduction happened debunk Odinkalu’s false tale. Mrs. Galadima, the Agwam Adara’s widow, and Mr. Stephen Audu Garba, gave eyewitness accounts to The Cross News, a publication of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kaduna. The November 2018 edition of The Cross News quoted Mrs Galadima as saying that the kidnappers abandoned her in the bush on the night of the abduction. Mr. Stephen Audu Garba told The Cross News that:

“It was on Friday, 19th October, when we went Kaduna for the send forth ceremony of his younger brother’s daughter. So, he was there to bless her before the actual wedding ceremony. We went through the programme halfway and after the blessing, we left for Kachia immediately. On our way back, some 30 to 40 kilometres to Kachia town, just immediately after we got to the village of Maikyali, we ran into an unpleasant situation -kidnappers. We didn’t know there was ambush. We ran into them, and we were forced to lie down on the road for some minutes along with some other people who were unfortunately caught in the unpleasant situation. They were instantly shot and killed, and some were abducted into the bush including His Royal Highness and his wife and we stayed there for some time, helplessly, until after some minutes when a military team came. We were rescued and taken back home late in the night.”

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There had been an outbreak of violence in Kasuwan Magani on Thursday, 18th October 2018. Malam Nasir el-Rufai visited the Kasuwan Magani to commiserate with the people and assess the security situation. It was in Kasuwan Magani that the first ethno-religious crisis in Kaduna State broke out in 1981 during the Second Republic tenure of Governor Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, which made the 2018 violence quite concerning across the State and, of course, to then Governor el-Rufai.

During its first term, the el-Rufai administration reduced the number of district heads across the state to 77 from 390. The Administration also began exploring how to introduce greater order in the structure and running of traditional institutions and furthering empowering them to become promoters of peaceful relations across the communities in their domains. The deliberations included discussing whether the naming of chiefdoms after tribes, rather than territory, was not inimical to the objective of uniting all communities within a chiefdom.

It is therefore very important to note that the administration adopted a policy to name traditional institutions after territory. In Kajuru LGA, the erstwhile Adara (named after a tribe) and Kajuru (named after a territory) chiefdoms had exercised traditional authority, but the Agwam Adara had his palace and the headquarters of his chiefdom in Kachia, the headquarters of Kachia LGA. Consistent with the policy to name chiefdoms after territory, the El-Rufai administration created Kufana Chiefdom in Kajuru LGA to exercise the functions hitherto exercised by the Adara Chiefdom. Kachia chiefdom was also established. All these adjustments are captured in the Traditional Institutions Law which was enacted in 2021. This law classified the chiefdoms and emirates in the state and prescribed the ruling houses and patterns of succession for each.

In 2017, the traditional councils of Kagarko, Kajuru, Lere and Kauru chiefdoms applied to be redesignated as emirates. The government granted the request from these four chiefdoms which straddled the three senatorial districts of the State: Lere in Kaduna North Senatorial District, Kajuru in Kaduna Central while Kagarko and Kauru are in Kaduna South Senatorial District. None of them exercised traditional authority outside their specified communities. When these requests for redesignation were approved in 2018, Odinkalu tried to spin it as an instance of compelling some chiefdoms to become emirates.

Chidi Odinkalu has form in posturing as the authority on Kaduna State matters. While many Nigerians spent the morning of 16th February 2019 digesting the postponement of the presidential election scheduled for that day, Odinkalu spent hours on live television trying to deny that killings of members of a specific community had taken place days earlier in a village in Kajuru LGA area. He kept on insisting that his network in Kaduna had told him there were no killings in Kajuru LGA contrary to the announcement by then Governor Nasir el-Rufai who had received the report from the military and other security agencies. Neither the site visits and the testimonies of the survivors nor the visuals confirming the killings moved Odinkalu who persisted in his claims that his network’s information was superior to official reports from the military and security agencies.

Odinkalu hung on to his lie and he was publicly admonished for his bad behaviour by leading, knowledgeable civil society figures. Eminent political scientist and civic leader Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim told Odinkalu in a tweet on 17 February 2019 to “please avoid misinforming people. #AllLivesMatter so you cannot get angry over the killing of some and falsely deny the killings of others. @elrufai is not the issue.”

In a bid to address his falsehoods, the Kaduna State Ministry of Justice initiated the prosecution of Odinkalu for injurious falsehood and incitement, which are offences in the Penal Code of Kaduna State. Mr. Odinkalu successfully evaded arrest and arraignment during the tenure of the El-Rufai administration. This effort to make him accountable for his actions is a key motivation in his persistent campaign of hatred and defamation against the former Governor.

The latest prompt for Odinkalu’s eruption of lies is a recent Federal High Court ruling in a matter on which neither Malam Nasir el-Rufai nor his lawyers were served with court processes before judgment was entered. Media reports indicate that the case, filed in March 2024, stemmed from the aftermath of the sorry events of February 2019 in Kajuru LGA. We will not join Odinkalu in litigating the matter in the media. We are certain the lawyers will handle this satisfactorily. Suffice it to say that in the Kajuru LGA case, as Dr. Ibrahim alluded to in the tweet quoted, not all lives mattered to Mr. Odinkalu and not being in possession of the facts did not discourage him from pontificating about those matters.

Muyiwa Adekeye is the Media Adviser to Malam Nasir El-Rufai