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“He who comes to equity must come with clean hands.” Ikemefuna Okeke, registered with the United States Department of Justice as Dr Karl-Marx Edward Okeke-von Batten III, you may want to sit with that maxim for a while. @batten_von For months you have made serious claims about Nigeria, its institutions and the President of the Federal Republic. You did so while working under a political and reputational engagement for a man who wants to become President of that same country. Nobody disputes your right to advocate for a client or to criticise Nigeria. The facts are a different matter. Those belong to everyone, and you have been treating them as though they came with the retainer. There is something Nigerians deserve to know. 1. On 1 April 2026, in the FARA registration covering your work for Atiku Abubakar, you identified yourself to the United States Department of Justice as Dr Karl-Marx Edward Okeke-von Batten III. Under “Nationality” you declared UNITED STATES. Under “Present Citizenship” you declared UNITED STATES. That filing was made under penalty of perjury, and the words on it are yours. 2. Nigerians are entitled to know who is speaking to them, in what capacity, for whose benefit and for how much. The agreement under which your firm represents Atiku Abubakar provides for $1.2 million over twelve months. It expressly covers political and national-security advice, policy positioning, reputational strategy, engagement with Congress and the executive branch, and the development of U.S.-facing policy messaging. 3. Questions about your own representations, conduct and disclosures will be put to you, and where appropriate to the relevant institutions, in the proper form and on the record. You will have every opportunity to answer them in the United States, where these representations were filed, and in Nigeria, whose public affairs you have chosen to enter so forcefully. When I wrote on Sunday night, West African time, about paid foreign advocacy directed at Nigerian political affairs, I wrote as a Nigerian citizen and on my own account. My allegiance is to my country, Nigeria, before anything else. The dignity of more than 220 million Nigerians cannot become collateral in a $1.2 million 'lobbying and strategic-advisory engagement'. The public has every right to examine narratives constructed about Nigeria in the service of a paying political client, to know who commissioned them, who is disseminating them and what commercial relationship sits behind them. That right matters most when the people constructing those narratives present themselves as disinterested arbiters of transparency and democratic propriety. Hence the old maxim. There will be no need for abuse or innuendo. The record will do the work. On 1 October 1960, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa told the world: “Do not mistake our pride for arrogance.” In our own time, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu put our attachment to country just as plainly: “We are Nigerians, and we have no other country.” You have made your declarations. Allow us ours. That is where I stand. O’tega “The Tiger” Ogra Proudly Nigerian
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  Yesterday at 6:03:19 AM
 
 
 


 
 
 
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