Tinubu & Chagoury: The medal and the Memory, By Sonala Olumhense

Nigerians are a people of colour.  Music.  Dance.

But the medal arrived like a thief in the night.

No drums.  No roll call of service rendered.  No public citation read into the nation’s memory. Nothing.

Well, only a document, quiet as a bank transfer, bearing the authority of Bola Tinubu, and the name of Gilbert Chagoury, now inscribed among those Nigeria says it honours.

Tinubu is Nigeria’s president; Chagoury is his long-time friend.  Two men with remarkably controversial paths.

The record places Chagoury in the long shadow of the infamous Sani Abacha, whose regime turned Nigeria into a vault without a lock and a nation without a ledger.

In that era, when the national anthem challenged all patriots to rise, Chagoury was not a bystander.

He was a facilitator, a man with the passports, the banks, the addresses, the phone numbers, the introductions.

A Swiss court, not a Nigerian columnist, made that finding.

In 2000, Switzerland convicted him of money laundering and of aiding a criminal organisation.

The court found that accounts were created in Geneva to receive funds traced to Nigeria’s Central Bank, funds later acknowledged by Nigeria itself as stolen. Chagoury paid fines. He returned $66 million.

He explained he did not know the money was dirty.  Sure.

But courts do not convict on sentiment, nor do states recover stolen funds as acts of goodwill.

This is not an allegation.  It is what the record affirms.

It is a matter of record. Nigeria recovered money from Abacha’s network, but it never conducted a full moral audit of the system that made the theft possible. The country chose recovery over reckoning, refunds over responsibility.

Keep in mind that Nigerian leaders, including the loud anti-corruption pretender from Daura and Tinubu, have, in the past decade, ignored various federal court orders to disclose spending details of about USD$5bn Abacha loot.

These choices have consequences.  Among others, when you collect refunds without confronting how it was stolen and who enabled the theft, you suggest regret that you were not a beneficiary, or an acceptance that there was nothing wrong with the crime itself.

And you create a class of men who have settled with the state but have never been judged by it.  Men who are free to return, rebrand, and re-enter power through side doors and in the dark of night.  Because while restitution may close a file, it does not cleanse its history.

Chagoury’s return was not abrupt. It was elegantly plotted: philanthropy, diplomacy, access.

He appeared in Western donor circles. His name surfaced in the orbit of American political fundraising. When US authorities later alleged that illegal foreign donations were routed through straw donors, the matter ended, again, not with prison, but with payment: $1.8 million.

Once more, money stood between conduct and consequence: a familiar Nigerian pattern.

While reputation was being refurbished abroad, influence at home was being consolidated.

In Lagos, under Governor Bola Tinubu, Chagoury was cooking, his empire expanding remarkably into the very Atlantic itself. Ten million square metres of reclaimed shoreline were titled to Chagoury-linked entities. From that grant rose Eko Atlantic City, a shimmering promise built on land the public never meaningfully debated handing over.

Lagos became proof of concept: that proximity to power could substitute for transparency; that scale could drown scrutiny, that development could be declared without consent.

This was not illegal. It was something more enduring: a relationship.

But the most revealing fact is never the loudest one.  In this case, it was not the contracts.  It was not the megaprojects.

It was the children.

Corporate records showed Seyi Tinubu, the president’s son, in business arrangements with the Chagoury family: offshore companies, shared boards, interlocking interests. No law forbids this outright.  But no serious republic pretends that it is harmless.

When the children of power do business with the beneficiaries of power, the state ceases to look like an umpire. It begins to look like a family enterprise.

Conflict of interest does not require a bribe, but proximity.  Relationship.

As president, Tinubu presided over an infrastructure surge in which Chagoury-linked firms appeared again: roads, ports, coastal highways. Procurement controversies followed. Questions were asked about bidding, transparency, and speed.

Some legislators momentarily raised their voices, affirming they would carry out a probe.

But Tinubu’s government said the process was legal. The Senate didn’t bother.  The House quickly sat down and shut up.

Because capture does not announce itself as corruption.  Capture whispers.  It normalises.  It convinces the public that some people are simply meant to build the nation.

Then came the medal.  And with it, a message.

The medal did not say: we acknowledge your past and explain your redemption. It did not say: here is the service rendered, measured and verified.

It said nothing.

But silence is not neutrality.  Silence is instruction.  Tinubu’s honour of Chagoury instructs Nigerians that the Abacha years are closed; not because they were understood, but because they are inconvenient.

It instructs that convictions abroad, like forfeitures and scandals, are footnotes. That restitution equals redemption. That proximity to power is the highest form of rehabilitation…and recalibration.

In the courtroom, prosecutors know the most dangerous witness is the one who is never called.

So let the questions enter the record:

• What specific service to the Nigerian people does the presidency say Gilbert Chagoury rendered to merit one of the nation’s highest honours?
• How does a foreign conviction for laundering Nigerian public funds sit beside the moral standard of national honours?
• Were conflict-of-interest safeguards applied, documented, and disclosed regarding family business ties?
• Why was the honour conferred quietly, almost in a whisper, as if explanation itself were a risk?

Until these questions are answered, the medal remains less an honour than an exhibit, as I am sure Professor Wole Soyinka would acknowledge.

The Nobel Prize winner famously spoke out repeatedly about the Chagoury saga, and I hope he rises to his feet once more.

WSCIJ, named after him, has updated the file. The engaging Babafemi Ojudu provides an enthralling account in his book, Adventures of a Guerrilla Journalist.

Nations teach their values to their children and their observers not through speeches, but through whom they elevate.

Chagoury’s honour teaches that Nigeria has not finished with Abacha: That the past still walks into the present, changes clothes, and receives applause.  That memory is negotiable, and accountability is optional.

I have observed repeatedly on these Tinubu highways the Nigerian challenge of character: that it is being scrubbed out.  That power is being wielded “behind nods and winks.”  The Pied Piper seems determined to make sure we never forget.

But history keeps its own books.  And one day, quietly, inevitably, it will read this medal not as forgiveness, but as evidence.

Because history has a way of answering when power will not.  Because when time gives you a moment, wisdom warns: it has not given you itself.