It is commonplace for the typical African father to imagine that one of his children has disparaged him merely because that child has summoned the courage to tell him a truth that every other member of the household is too timid, too deferential, or too interested in preserving favour to say aloud.
The offence, therefore, is not necessarily that the child lied. Sometimes, the offence is precisely the opposite. The child said aloud what everybody else had silently agreed, for the sake of eye service, to pretend not to see.
I have therefore taken time to reflect upon the twenty-four-hour notice issued to me by the Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association, Owerri Branch, requiring me either to produce evidence in support of matters I published or to tender an apology to the Honourable Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Imo State, for publications said to contain falsehoods capable of disparaging him.
I recognise the seriousness of such a demand, particularly within a profession that places a premium upon reputation, evidence, accuracy and the responsible use of words.
In reflecting upon my present predicament, however, my mind wandered to Ayi Kwei Armah’s _The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born_ and its unnamed central character, known simply as “The Man.”
Armah places The Man in a society in which corruption and compromise have become so commonplace that refusing to participate in them begins to look almost abnormal. He refuses bribes. He resists the little accommodations by which others advance themselves. But, the consequence of his integrity is not applause. He becomes isolated, misunderstood and, at times, resented even by those closest to him.
That is because, in a society where compromise has become customary, the man who refuses to compromise soon begins to look like the troublesome one.
There is something profoundly unsettling in Armah’s insight.
When enough people become accustomed to a particular way of doing things, suspicion gradually shifts from the conduct complained of to the person complaining about it. The questions cease to be: _Is this right? Is this lawful? Is this proper? Instead, they become: Why must this man be the one making noise? Why can he not simply allow things to be Why must he always ask questions?_
In such an environment, integrity begins to acquire the appearance of insubordination, and the man pointing at the stain is gradually treated as though he were responsible for putting the stain there.
History had confronted this paradox long before Armah wrote his novel.
More than two thousand years ago, the city of Athens had its own troublesome man. His name was Socrates. Socrates walked the streets of Athens asking questions. His method was not principally to shout men down but to question their certainties until the contradictions buried beneath them became visible. Predictably, many of those whose assumptions collapsed under the weight of his questions did not become angry with their contradictions. They became angry with Socrates.
Socrates eventually described himself through one of history’s most memorable metaphors. Athens, he said, was like a great and noble horse which, because of its size, had become sluggish and needed to be stirred into wakefulness. He was the gadfly whose task was to sting the horse continually.
The gadfly was irritating.
Its presence was inconvenient. Its sting disturbed sleep. But that inconvenience was precisely its function, to keep the horse awake.
To contemporise the metaphor, the great horse may be the Bar. It may be the Government. It may be any institution sufficiently powerful to become comfortable with applause.
The gadfly is anyone courageous enough to ask the uncomfortable question.
And the sting is the truth or, at the very least, the question which those in authority would rather not answer.
Perhaps every institution, no matter how distinguished, occasionally needs its gadfly. Not because the gadfly is infallible. Not because irritating people are necessarily virtuous. But because an institution that hears nothing except applause may eventually mistake silence for agreement, obedience for legitimacy, and fear for respect.
Athens eventually put its gadfly on trial.
In 399 BC, Socrates stood before his fellow citizens accused by men who considered his questioning dangerous, his influence troublesome and his persistence intolerable.
What followed has come down to us through Plato under one of the most deliciously ironic titles in intellectual history, _The Apology of Socrates._
Having considered the twenty-four-hour ultimatum before me, I too have reached a decision. I shall apologise.
The only difficulty is that I understand an apology in the sense in which Socrates understood his _apologia._
His apology was neither capitulation nor grovelling. It was not a hurried withdrawal of inconvenient questions merely because powerful men had become uncomfortable.
His _apologia_ was a defence; an explanation; an account of himself; and, where necessary, an even more inconvenient restatement of the questions that had brought him before his accusers in the first place.
It is in that older, nobler and, in the present circumstances, infinitely more useful tradition that I propose to render mine.
Permit me, therefore, to constipate you with this apology. Brevity, I must confess, has never been among my more conspicuous virtues.
Therefore, this is my apology to Hon. Paul Obinatu, the Honourable, the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Imo State.
I confess that I employ the prefix “Honourable” with some caution, not because I am particularly hostile to titles, but because I have never been persuaded that a prefix can perform the work of character. This perhaps explains why I identify simply as Chinedu Agu.
Nigerian public life has subjected the word “Honourable” to such relentless semantic abuse that one is occasionally tempted to wonder whether, in certain deserving circumstances, “Horrible” would not be the more descriptively accurate prefix than “Honourable.”
But convention must be respected. This is, after all, a country in which titles occasionally acquire lives gloriously independent of the qualities they were originally intended to describe. We have perfected the curious national art of acquiring the title first and leaving character thereafter to struggle desperately to catch up.
It reminds me of the story of a man who, after several unsuccessful attempts to graduate from medical school, abandoned the degree altogether, proceeded to church and requested to be baptised under a new name – Doctor.
Sorry, I digressed.
Honourable Attorney-General, or HAG, if you permit me, I apologise that I am aware, and state that I am prepared to demonstrate if called upon to do so, that the Chairmen of the six NBA Branches in Imo State submitted their Branch account details to you well before the Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt. The accounts were collated through Dr. Mazi Udegbulem, who, at 18:52 hours on Wednesday, 12 August 2026, requested the account details of the Mbaise Branch by message. The Chairman complied and forwarded the official UBA account details of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mbaise Branch.
Those details, together with those of the other Branches, were thereafter collated and made available to you.
I apologise that I am aware that the money was expected to be disbursed to the Branches before departure for the Annual General Conference on 23 August 2026. I apologise further that I know that one of the complications which followed arose after my publication of 16 August 2026, titled in substance, “Something Is Brewing in the Imo State Judiciary,” in which I disclosed, before many members of the Bar became aware of it, the proposed ₦350 million largesse.
In that short piece, I also disclosed the proposed sharing formula: ₦100 million to NBA Owerri and ₦50 million each to the other five Branches.
HAG, I apologise that, after all six Branches had supplied their account details, five Branches received their payments on Monday, 24 August 2026. Mbaise did not, curiously!
And therein lies one of the uncomfortable questions.
Before then, Dr. Mazi Udegbulem had prepared a letter dated 14 August 2026 addressed to the National Judicial Council and communicated with the Branch Chairmen in these words: “Gentlemen, this is the copy of the letter for NJC. If we can spare time to read, approve and come sign it today, I will dispatch it to Abuja first thing tomorrow morning.”
The Chairman of NBA Mbaise objected. His position, as I understand it, was simple. The Branch Chairmen had not, at their meeting, agreed to write to the NJC on the subject. He therefore declined to sign.
The proposed letter remained in abeyance until after the Annual General Conference. It is my case that this disagreement transformed the Mbaise Chairman into the proverbial black sheep, The Man in Armah’s _The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,_ with the consequence that when the other Branches were credited on 24 August 2026, Mbaise was left out.
I apologise also that I am acutely aware that you and the former Chairman of the Orlu Branch, B. Amukamara, who is a member of the Judicial Service Commission, told your audience at the dinner you hosted in Port Harcourt during the Annual General Conference that all the Branches had received their money. All! That word is important.
If Mbaise had not been deliberately excluded, even temporarily or punitively, the innocent question becomes: Why announce that all the Branches had been paid when Mbaise had not?
Then, on 28 August 2026, I published “The ₦350m Imo Government Largesse to the NBA and Some Uncomfortable Questions.” It was in that publication that I disclosed that Mbaise had not received its allocation and stated what I believed to be the reason. I shall not reproduce that entire argument here.
Following that disclosure, arrangements eventually commenced for Mbaise to receive its ₦50 million.
My contention, and one I remain prepared to defend with evidence, is that but for the alarm I raised publicly, there was a real possibility that the Mbaise allocation would have suffered a fate rather different from that of the other Branches.
Why do I say so?
Because, in my view, the Eastern Bar Forum episode provides an instructive comparison.
I state that the Imo State Government released ₦40 million for the Eastern Bar Forum in connection with its meeting, but only ₦9 million was initially transferred to the Forum by you.
When the leadership of the EBF sought an explanation as to why ₦9 million had been transferred instead of ₦40 million, the explanation you reportedly offered was that your mobile banking application could not transfer more than that amount on the particular day and that the outstanding ₦31 million would follow the next day.
That evening, however, the EBF leadership honoured an invitation by the Acting Chief Judge of Imo State to a cocktail held to welcome the Forum, consistent with the Forum’s established practice.
You had, according to the information available to me, earlier advised the EBF leadership not to recognise the Acting Chief Judge on the argument that the office had become vacant by effluxion of time. When the EBF nevertheless attended the cocktail and recognised her in that capacity, things changed.
The balance of ₦31 million was not transferred. The dinner scheduled for the following day to be hosted by you, another customary feature of such meetings and for which funds had reportedly been approved, was cancelled. The sponsorship of the hall at Rockview, which had earlier been arranged for the EBF, was also withdrawn, and instructions were allegedly given concerning the Forum’s continued use of the venue.
If any of these propositions is false, HAG, I invite their specific rebuttal. Not abuse. Not adjectives. Not twenty-four-hour notices. Facts.
For my part, I am ready with mine.
The EBF, advisedly perhaps, did not make much public noise about the outstanding ₦31 million. And that is precisely why the Mbaise episode troubled me.
Silence is a dangerous currency around power. Once an institution discovers that people can be deprived, ignored or punished quietly, silence becomes an incentive.
I apologise, therefore, that I sounded the alarm.
I apologise that NBA Mbaise eventually received its ₦50 million only in the late hours of Tuesday, 1 September 2026, eight days after the other Branches had received theirs. And I apologise that I am still asking the obvious question: Why?
Several explanations were subsequently circulated. The first was that Mbaise had not been paid because its Chairman failed to attend the meeting of Friday, 21 August 2026, at which account details were allegedly to be submitted, having gone to court instead. That narrative quickly collapsed for two reasons.
First, the Chairman of Mbano/Etiti was also absent from that meeting, yet his Branch received its allocation alongside the others. Second, the Branch account details had already been collated through Dr. Udegbulem from 12 August 2026.
A second narrative then emerged – that the Mbaise Chairman had submitted his personal account and that you refused to transfer the money until the proper Branch account was later supplied. That account, too, was abandoned.
This is why, HAG, I remain persuaded that my publication of 28 August 2026 struck a nerve. I had described the largesse as a Greek gift, raised uncomfortable questions about its timing and circumstances, and stated my belief that the Mbaise allocation might not have been released but for the public attention drawn to it.
I am aware that, following my publication, the Secretary of the NBA Mbaise Branch issued a disclaimer in which she descended into descriptions of me as a liar, rumour-monger and busybody.
My information is that the statement did not enjoy the approval of her Chairman and that he declined to append his signature to it. Whatever personal differences may exist between the Secretary and me, official communication by an institution ought to remain official in character.
As a former Branch Secretary myself, I am aware that under the Uniform Bye-Law for Branches, the Chairman is the principal spokesperson of the Branch, and a communication presented as the formal position of the Branch ought to comply with the institutional processes required for such communication.
My quarrel is therefore not merely personal. Institutions must speak institutionally.
HAG, perhaps my principal offence is that I have access to information and have developed the unfortunate habit of refusing to pretend that I do not. For that offence, I confess without mitigation. And I intend to remain a serial offender.
HAG, I understand the choreography.
The notice issued to me by the Publicity Secretary who, by the sudden enthusiasm with which my matter has been prosecuted, might easily be mistaken for an auxiliary Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Justice, appears to me less like a final act than the testing of a microphone.
The first stage, I suspect, is to remove me from the six NBA Owerri platforms to which I belong, including by virtue of my previous service in the Executive Committee, upon the allegation that I have disparaged the Attorney-General, the Chairman and members of his Executive Committee.
Once the gadfly is expelled from the stable, perhaps the horse may finally sleep in peace. But institutions rarely become healthier by expelling uncomfortable voices. They merely become quieter. And quietness should never be confused with health.
The second part, I fear, is isolation – discredit the messenger first, manufacture sufficient hostility around his person, and then whatever comes after will appear deserved. It is an old script.
September 2025 is not so distant that I have forgotten it. I know what followed when Mr. Declan Emelumba and others embarked upon a course, which eventually led me through arrest, prosecution, and remand in prison custody by the Magistrate, obinna Njemanze.
I apologise that I recognise familiar pages when an old book is reopened. I am aware also of efforts to revisit my file at the Ministry of Justice.
If the intention is to resurrect the September 2025 script, then perhaps I should save everybody the suspense. I am not afraid. I have travelled that road before. I am prepared to travel it again with my head held high.
Martin Luther King Jr. once reminded mankind that a man who has discovered nothing worth dying for is not fit to live.
I do not romanticise suffering.
I do not have a fetish for detention. I do not regard prison custody as an achievement. But neither do I regard the fear of prison as a sufficient reason for a lawyer to surrender his conscience.
As for the evidence of the matters stated here, let me borrow from the proverbial wisdom associated with Chinua Achebe: why should a man be in such a hurry to lick his fingers after a meal when he does not intend to hang those fingers upon the rafters?
My fingers remain intact. So does my evidence.
If any person named in this publication is persuaded that any material allegation I have made is defamatory because it is false, the courts remain open. Sue me.
Particularise the falsehood. Put me in the witness box. And I shall come with what I know. I would much rather defend uncomfortable facts before a court of competent jurisdiction than apologise for them in the court of political convenience.
My advice to you, HAG, is therefore simple. The lizard that ruins its mother’s funeral does not disgrace the funeral alone, it advertises its own lack of home training before the entire village.
History should teach every Attorney-General one elementary lesson: Governments come and go. The legal profession remains.
An Attorney-General may enjoy the confidence of a Governor today, but the day inevitably comes when the sirens fall silent, the convoy disappears, the files leave the table, and the title “Honourable Attorney-General” returns to Government House.
What remains thereafter is the lawyer. And the Bar remembers. The Bench remembers. History remembers. Most importantly, one’s conscience remembers.
There have been Attorneys-General who appeared formidable while power lasted but who, after public office, discovered that political applause is a very poor substitute for professional esteem.
The office you occupy, HAG, is not merely the office of Government’s lawyer. It is supposed to be Government’s conscience in law. The Attorney-General must be able to tell a Governor not only what Government can do, but what justice says Government ought not to do.
If the chief law officer becomes merely the chief defender of political convenience, then an office created to restrain power becomes another instrument through which power is exercised. And that would be a tragedy far greater than any article Chinedu Agu could ever write.
Now to the Chairman of the NBA Owerri Branch, Dr. Mazi Udegbulem. Mr. Chairman, I am aware that following your visit to Government House on Sunday, 9 August 2026, the letter dated 14 August 2026, which you subsequently presented to the other Branch Chairmen for signature emerged. I have a copy of that letter. Should litigation eventually become necessary, it will form part of the material upon which I intend to rely.
Standing alone, perhaps the letter might appear innocuous. But context is an unforgiving companion.
At the Advisory Council meeting of June 2026, when you invited members to advise on the memorandum concerning the extension of the tenure of the Acting Chief Judge, the position reached was that the NJC had not acted outside the Constitution and that the Owerri Bar should refrain from interfering in or reacting to the NJC’s decision regarding the acting capacity of the Acting Chief Judge.
At the July 2026 Monthly General Meeting, you again referred to the issue while conveying the position of the Advisory Council. One is therefore entitled to ask: What changed What intervened between the institutional position that the Branch should refrain from taking sides and the subsequent attempt to mobilise the six Branch Chairmen behind a letter to the NJC on substantially the same controversy?
That question becomes even more important when viewed against the trajectory of your administration thus far. At the Eastern Bar Forum Quarterly General Meeting, in the presence of lawyers from across the South-East, Judges of Imo State, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association and his entourage, you mounted the rostrum to deliver your address.
Yet you conspicuously declined to recognise the Acting Chief Judge of your own State and heis brother Judges.
You did not stop there.
While reading the address published in the programme brochure, you reached into your pocket and produced an additional text dealing with what you considered the impropriety of the continued acting tenure of the Chief Judge.
The intervention astonished many members of the legal community present.
The following week, you convened a meeting of the Advisory Council of NBA Owerri to consider communication from the NJC concerning the extension of the Acting Chief Judge’s tenure.
Mr. Chairman, these things do not occur in a vacuum. They form a pattern. And citizens, lawyers most especially, are permitted to notice patterns.
I apologise also that I am aware that NBA Owerri received ₦100 million on 24 August 2026. Yet, for days afterwards, no formal acknowledgement of the receipt was made on the Branch platforms.
Instead, persons who asked questions, made comments, or expressed views about the money which appeared not to find favour with the leadership were removed, threatened with removal, shouted down or otherwise treated as irritants.
This approach reminded me painfully of the July Monthly General Meeting, where members, senior and junior alike, watched the microphone become an instrument to be rationed according to the acceptability of the opinion waiting to travel through it.
Mr. Chairman, a microphone at a Bar meeting is not a presidential pardon. A member should not have to earn executive affection before being permitted to speak. The Bar is argumentative by design. Lawyers disagree. Lawyers ask questions. Lawyers irritate one another.
Indeed, a Bar in which everybody agrees with the Chairman is not necessarily a peaceful Bar. It may simply be a frightened one.
Remember also the old wisdom: it may take a multitude only a few minutes to finish the feast of one man, but when that multitude prepares its feast for the one man, he may not finish it in his lifetime. Power is intoxicating partly because it creates the illusion of permanence.
But every tenure has a final Monthly General Meeting. Every Chairman eventually becomes a former Chairman. And the members who could not reach the microphone while you presided will still be standing when you come down from the podium. We are therefore watching.
We are watching to see whether the Owerri Bar will retain its historical independence or gradually become indistinguishable from the political establishment it ought occasionally to question. We are watching the growing proximity between the leadership of the Branch and prominent actors in the ruling political structure. Proximity to Government is not, by itself, a sin.
Indeed, an effective Bar must be able to engage Government. But there is an important difference between engagement and entanglement. The Bar may dine with Government. It may partner with Government. It may accept Government’s support for legitimate institutional purposes.
But when justice walks into the room and Government stands on the other side, the Bar must still remember where it belongs. That is the line. Once that line becomes blurred, the Bar ceases to be a watchdog and risks becoming furniture in the Government House parlour.
I have belonged to the NBA Owerri Branch for fourteen years. In those years, I have seen Chairmen come and go. I have seen disagreements. I have seen controversy. I have seen difficult moments. But I confess that I find the direction of the present leadership deeply troubling.
And because I belong to this Branch, because I have served this Branch, because its dignity matters to me, I shall not pretend otherwise merely because pretending might make me more popular with those presently in office.
Mr. Chairman, I fear that you are walking a path which, unless corrected, may leave your administration remembered not for strengthening the voice of the Bar but for attempting to discipline that voice into obedience. That would be an unfortunate legacy.
Honourable Attorney-General Paul Obinatu. Kindly accept my apology. But please understand the apology you are accepting.
I apologise in the Socratic sense. I apologise for asking questions. I apologise for remembering dates. I apologise for retaining messages. I apologise for noticing discrepancies. I apologise for refusing to believe that the reputation of public officers is protected by suppressing questions about public affairs. I apologise for believing that when money meant for an institution enters the equation, members of that institution acquire the right to ask where it came from, when it came, how much came, who received it, who did not receive it, why there was a delay, and what obligations, if any, accompanied it.
I apologise for believing that a Bar Association whose members are trained professionally to interrogate witnesses should not become allergic to the interrogation of its own leadership.
And I apologise most profoundly for possessing the incurable conviction that power must explain itself.
HAG, history has placed you in one of the most consequential offices in the administration of justice in Imo State. The Ministry of Justice is not an annex of partisan warfare.
The Attorney-General is not merely an advocate retained to win every argument for Government. There will be occasions when fidelity to justice will require you to disappoint Government. That is not disloyalty. That is the highest loyalty the Attorney-General can render to Government.
Because the most dangerous adviser around a Governor is not the man who sometimes says No. It is the man who has forgotten how to say it.
Power can obtain a remand order, but it cannot obtain an injunction against history. A Government may temporarily silence a critic, but it cannot cross-examine posterity. And when posterity eventually calls its witnesses, official titles will not be admissible in evidence. Only conduct will.
So, HAG, be the conscience of Government in law.
conscience.
In concluding, Honourable Attorney-General, kindly accept my apology in the only sense in which I am presently able to offer one.
Chinedu Agu
Solicitor | Notary Public | Past Secretary, NBA Owerri | Former Political Detainee
8 September 2026
