When former vice president Atiku Abubakar engaged a United States-based lobbying firm, Von Batten-Montague-York LC, last March for $1.2m to burnish his public image and give him unfettered access in US policy circles, too many things were intentionally obfuscated in the contract. Few things were expressly stated. Indeed, the real job of the lobbying firm was to excoriate Alhaji Atiku’s main opponent, President Bola Tinubu, in the 2027 Nigerian presidential election, not the projection of the former vice president in the US. Secondly, the deal also tried to shroud the real identity of the real owner of the firm, a man of Nigerian origin but with the German-sounding name of Dr Karl Von Batten. His real name, it turned out is Ikemefuna Okeke, and he had once done image laundering jobs inexpertly for Somalia and DR Congo.
It is now widely known that since his lobbying firm was hired, Dr Okeke has gone at the job with unremitting viciousness and remorseless falsehoods on two levels. One, he has lied about his status and projected himself to be more important within the US system than he really is. Clearly, he needs to keep justifying the amount being spent on him by the former vice president. He has lied about appointments given him in the US, nearly all insignificant, including hiding facts and distorting the news. And when he is caught, he has blamed, not himself, but the Nigerian ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and presidential aides. Two, he has told colourful and exaggerated stories about the supposed impact he was making. Thus, he has painted stories of visitations to the White House, all but indicated he had met or would meet President Donald Trump, and suggested immoderately that the US president or State Department was poised to take certain actions to humiliate the Nigerian ruling party or President Tinubu.
Unfortunately, Alhaji Atiku’s US lobbyists and their actions appear to evoke the macabre streak in some Nigerians. Most opposition leaders and members, including all kinds of disaffected people, readily believe the worst of their country. Dr Okeke, aka Karl Von Batten, recognises this flaw in Nigerians and has fed them a steady diet of bitter and vindictive stories that demean their national worth and esteem. He has also not spared them of nasal feeding of tendentious and inciting stories about their leaders. Alhaji Atiku is committed to paying the lobbyists $100,000 every month until the end of the contract after the Nigerian elections. The lobbyists will, therefore, do anything, tell any lies, no matter how infamous, and fake any status to justify their pay.
Alhaji Atiku might already be aware of the ignoble reputation of his lobbyists, particularly their failed contracts in other parts of Africa, and the humongous hype that had sustained the firm in business. He is, however, unlikely to care whatever anyone thinks of the firm. The lobbyists may not get the former vice president mileage of any kind, or open doors irrevocably shut against him in US policy circles since his fourth wife Jennifer Douglas Atiku was accused of managing more than $40m slush money on his behalf. But because the Nigerian media have become so unprofessional and gullible, and have continued to regurgitate and even amplify unverified stories about President Tinubu fed them by Dr Okeke, Alhaji Atiku sees these widely sensational and exaggerated stories as evidence of the firm’s effectiveness. He will not terminate the contract.
The lobbying firm’s work, not to say their dubieties, also tells Nigerians something even more eerily disturbing about their mentality. While most of Europe and Asia are weaning themselves off their dependence on the US and replacing the respect bordering on reverence they once had for American power and foreign policies, some Nigerians, particularly opposition politicians who want America to influence the Nigerian elections in their favour, are deifying the US and worshipping at American altars. Alhaji Atiku is made of that same old and jaded mould. In the last Osun State governorship elections, leaders of the Accord Party had appealed to President Trump, reported imaginary infractions to the American leaders, and got the equally suppliant Nigerian media to amplify their messages and argue for either visa ban against Nigerian ruling party leaders and their families or outright sanctions. The self-hate and self-deprecation were so intense that when President Trump threatened to invade Nigeria to avenge Christians, many in the opposition applauded the move and hoped it would lead to the overthrow of the Nigerian government.
Alhaji Atiku could legitimately and effectively make a case for his election as president. In fact, he has only now started to explore that possibility, even though his first hesitant steps in that direction relating to the restoration of subsidy through the production side of the fuel business have been ill-informed and anticlimactic. But in the past few months, after watching his campaign flag and progress remained turgid and unable to gain sufficient traction, especially with the sundering of the opposition coalition, he had become desperate and frantic. Given the setback the subsidy argument has caused him, he is unlikely to look for another hard policy bone to chew because of his geriatric intellectual dentition. He realised too late that even his supporters, many of them ignorant of economic issues, have since reconciled themselves to the subsidy removal policy and exchange rate flotation. None of the 36 states, and no serious member of the policy and business elite, want a return to the ungainly and financially dissonant past. The former vice president will, therefore, press whatever advantage he believes he has in demarketing President Tinubu and the APC. But even here, he has also already begun to meet very limited success.
The former vice president, who is now the African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, will continue to welcome and disseminate the mendacities Dr Okeke’s lobbying firm dishes out. Alhaji Atiku’s instincts tell him that many Nigerians are fetched by falsehoods, are too lazy to verify news or social media posts, are too superstitious to separate fact from fiction or truth from falsehood, have appalling low self-esteem, are still neocolonial in orientation, believe their salvation lies with outsiders, especially President Trump, and have little faith in their own institutions and leaders. Trapped in this vicious circle, together with their bought media, they will remain vulnerable to lies from outsiders and lobbying firms as well as the propagation and reiteration of those lies by local leaders still shackled by feelings of racial inferiority. The disgraceful appeal to outside powers and leaders will not disappear anytime soon. Politicians like Alhaji Atiku and the still unsophisticated and undiscriminating but loud Nigerian media will make freeing the minds of Nigerians difficult in the short to medium run.