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Festus Keyamo: How Not to be A Good Lawyer. The Dubious Personality Behind A Public Enemy.

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*Clad in their traditional black suit, white shirt and tie, they march with a certain swagger, knowing that they could be on either side of a page and still flip the scripts to the whims and caprices of their client.

* Law is one of the most noble professions one can get involved with, and at the same time one of the dirtiest jobs you’ll ever find yourself, the decision is always with the practitioner, you can be a good or bad lawyer, just like good cop bad cop, it all depends on your orientation and personality.

Unfortunately, the quest for wealth has driven many lawyers into the dirty section of this noble profession and it seems this trend will not be coming to an end anytime soon as the proverbial love for money which is the root of all evil has spread these evil roots and tentacles deep in the heart of many lawyers.

This brings us to the bane of today, the 52 year old former protege of legal icon, Chief Gani Fawehinmi who has spent majority of his life and career on the wrong side of history and for all the wrong reasons too. Disguising behind the noble profession to lead a rather unenviable life, Festus Keyamo is one of the many reasons why Nigeria keeps regressing, a man without integrity.

Firstly, let us try to understand Keyamo and what went wrong along his career trajectory that makes him a public enemy to many Nigerians, especially the youths who make up 70% of the country’s population.

Humble Beginnings: Early Years as a Lawyer

Festus keyamo (Image Source – Google)

Festus Keyamo was a bright prospect as a young lawyer, he was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1993 after graduating with a law degree from Ambrose Ali University at Ekpoma, in Edo state and would go on to serve in the chamber of the legal luminary, former presidential candidate and national icon, Chief Gani Fawehinmi for a short period before moving on to set up his personal chamber. His association with a figure who is considered a National Hero by many Nigerians would become a plot for a dramatic twist as he went from being a solid, principled and dexterous young lawyer to a greedy, selfish, insensitive and arrogant personality.

In this exposé we will look at his antecedents and follow through with how a lawyer without integrity operates, a blueprint on How NOT to be a good lawyer.

Our story begins in 2015 when Keyamo served as the lead prosecuting counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the corruption case against former Bayelsa State governor, Timipre Syla. Sometime in 2012, his chamber was contacted to take on the job of putting Mr Sylva behind bars for his alleged involvement in embezzlement of public funds and money laundering, an offer which Keyamo accepted swiftly. For 3 years, Mr Keyamo managed this case, he however abruptly withdrew from the case 3 days to the trial without categorically stating the reason(s) for his rather sudden decision. His decision reeked of dishonesty, double-dealing and incompetence, his refusal to state categorically the reason for his rash decision fueled a lot of speculation, one of which is that Keyamo allegedly received a large paycheck from Sylva’s camp to withdraw from the case after EFCC refused to settle outside the court. A case he had worked on for 3 long years and even had the defendant by the balls, he woke up one morning and decided he wasn’t going to nail the coffin, for absolutely no reason. He proceeded to inform the EFCC chairman through a letter dated Friday 22nd May 2015, that he was withdrawing his position as lead prosecuting counsel to the EFCC, he advised them to “find another lawyer”, the trial was only 3 days away, originally scheduled for Monday 25th May 2015. Today, Festus Keyamo and Timipre Sylva, both members of the APC, are ‘best of friends’. Talk about integrity.

A Monumental Failure

It is also worthy of note that Keyamo as lead prosecuting counsel to EFCC, a job he got by fraternizing with Farida Waziri then Chairperson of EFCC, led the anti-graft agency to prosecution in twenty-one high-profile corruption cases but managed to secure only one conviction; that is the case of PDP chieftain and former national vice-chairman, Chief Bode George. One of his many losses as the agency’s prosecuting counsel was the 2018 bribery case in which he represented a former costums officer who accused the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) chairman, Justice Danladi Umar for soliciting and receiving bribe in order to throw away the case of false asset declaration leveled against the former costums officer. A case which was twice dismissed by the EFCC based on lack of evidence. In a twist of events, he would then collaborate with the then EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Magu who without authorization from the Attorney-General of the federation, file the same bribe case twice dismissed, against the CCT chairman. Of course the case didn’t go to trial.

Keyamo is Nigeria’s Worst Ever Federal Minister Since 1953 – Independent Study Reveals (Image Source: Google)

Joins Politics, Becomes Part of Buhari’s Cabinet

Keyamo served as the spokesperson for the Buhari/Osinbajo re-election campaign in 2018 and after the victory he was nominated as a junior minister, a position he currently occupies and has grossly underperformed. In this position, he has been constantly and unnecessarily mouthy, always making controversial statements that further projects him as a public enemy. Keyamo claims to be a human rights activist, yet he has refused to quit his position in the cabinet which has recorded the highest rate of human rights violations in Nigeria’s democratic history. A recent independent study conducted by Reportera News revealed that Keyamo is Nigeria’s worst ever federal minister foor the last 70 years.

Senior Advocate of Nigeria Nonsense

In 2017, Keyamo was awarded the prestigious title of (SAN) Senior Advocate of Nigeria. Of course, as with every aspect of his principal Buhari’s regime, the consistency in rewarding incompetent people didn’t elude Keyamo as he was unmeritorously awarded the title after 8 failed attempts at securing the coveted phrase “Senior Advocate of Nigeria”. A title he readily  brandishes, “Festus Keyamo, (SAN)” could be seen on his Twitter page, as if it was deserved, he was only awarded this title because of his role in the economic and socio-political regression of Nigeria. Buhari rewards incompetence, it’s a well known fact.

Case with Apostle Johnson Suleman

In 2017, a Canada-based professional stripper, Stephanie Otobo dragged Edo state born fiery preacher, Apostle Johnson Suleman into a major scandal after claiming that she was involved in a heated romance with the preacher with the latter even promising to marry her. She sued the preacher for forcefull abortion and emotional damages after allegedly reneging on his promise to marry her, this gets interesting. To further expatiate, I’ll put this in plain text. An adult is suing another adult for convincing her to abort a pregnancy after having series of consensual unprotected sex. This same adult is also suing the adult, a married man, for reneging on his promise to marry her. Now, no reasonable lawyer of repute and in their right frame of mind takes up such a case riddled with baseless and meaningless accusations, moreso a SAN. Oh wait, there’s Festus Keyamo, who coincidentally is a ‘SAN’, oh well. The stripper would eventually confess to false allegations after she was arrested by law enforcement officers, she fingered Keyamo as the mastermind and ringleader of the scheme which was intended to extort money from the Auchi preacher. Apostle Suleman would later sue Keyamo for NGN1bn for defamation, the charges would later be dropped after Otobo’s public apology and Keyamo’s retraction.

Fraud Case: Swindles Pakistani Drug Lord of $400,000

Relationship With His Home-State Delta and Young Nigerians

Keyamo has always been a foul and selfish man even before joining politics, he doesn’t allign with anything that benefits his people, if you get his palms oiled and make his pocket deeper, he will defend the most ridiculous policies, damning all consequences. Never has Festus Keyamo sided with the people, people like him can’t get elected through the ballot and he knows this, the reason why he has never brought up any conversation about contesting in any election, he knows that he will lose woefully. Keyamo despite his position of influence and affluence has not engaged in projects to benefit his home state of Delta. No youth empowerment project, no women empowerment program, nothing! he’s just dedicated to enriching himself and distancing himself from anything that can benefit Nigerians. He is so unpopular in his state that an average Delta indigene doesn’t know who he is. In the 2022 presidential election, he lost his polling unit and ward Peter Obi’s Labour Party, a further testament to his lack of political influence in his homestead.

Marriage, Philandering & Gross Irresponsibility

Keyamo married his now ex-wife Isioma Irene in 2004, the marriage lasted barely 5 years before it imploded due to his grossly irresponsible lifestyle as alleged by his ex-wife. He filed for divorce citing irreparable damages as the reason to dissolve the marriage. It was in this divorce suit that his disgusting lifestyle was brought to the fore as his antecedents had frustrated his estranged wife into depression and severe psychological trauma which eventually led her to failure when she wrote her Nigeria Law School final exams. The former Mrs Keyamo detailed how he would rather spend lavishly chasing girls around Lagos sleeping with anything under a skirt but would renege on his commitment to provide enough on the domestic front for her and their children, she alleged that he was a very insensitive and stingy man when it came to providing for his family. In Mr Keyamo’s petition for the dissolution of the marriage, one of the reasons he highlighted was the ex-wife’s inability to cook, this is in addition to her ill-temper and foul-mouth, as alleged. But of course, you can’t be a chronic cheat and expect your wife to applaud you, it’s like spanking a child and telling them not to cry, it’s just impossible. Only an unstable man wakes up one day to file for divorce on the grounds that his wife of over 5 years can not cook, it’s laughable at best, well, Mr Keyamo isn’t stable, apparently.

On 2nd October 2009, Vanguard Newspapers  reported how Keyamo threw his wife and kids out of their matrimonial home in very torrid conditions and left them at the mercy of the streets. Chima Ugboji of Daily Champion obtained court documents in October 2009 which indicated that Keyamo had abandoned his family and refused to provide financial upkeep for his children’s welfare for 2 years, as alleged by the ex-wife. Their children were 5 and 2 years old at the time, such a heartless monster.

Nigerians should therefore not be bewildered at Mr Keyamo’s controversial life and consistent contributions to the regression of their country, a man who failed to manage his family due to his insensitivity will obviously not give a hoot about what ordinary, everyday people who have no blood relationship with him, think of him. What really should we expect of a man who chased his wife and kids away from their home and abandoned them for 2 years, his insensitivity knows no bounds.

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2 Comments

2 Comments

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  2. Ndubu Eze

    May 24, 2023 at 2:17 am

    I believe that due to lack of space, more of Keyamo’s evils were not unveiled here. He’s as evil as sin & is an exact duplicate of Femi Fani Kayode. None of them gives a damn about the country or anyone else but themselves. They’re so we’ll fitted for a shamelessly corrupt party like APC, who’s president came under the guise of fighting corruption but instead promoted &:magnified a zillion times. Keyamo will steal from anyone, be it his mother, father, children, brother & sister. That’s how diabolical & depraved he is. He’s best of friends with wife beater FFK another demented clown & criminal calling himself a lawyer but can’t even obtain the SAN title idiots like Keyamo acquired. Shameless low lives.

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2 BIRDS OF A FEATHER: HOW APC & PDP FEASTED ON LP VOTES

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The 2023 Presidential Election has been themed the ‘worst election in the history of Nigeria’ by most Nigerians & observers from across the globe.

Prof Mahmood Yakubu declared Tinubu president-elect amidst controversial circumstances

Many weeks have passed since Prof Mahmood Yakubu controversially announced the APC candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the winner of the polls and subsequently returned as the president-elect, but Nigerians won’t let this slide as a resolve has been made by the country’s very youthful population to restore the mandate which majority of them opine is rightfully the LP presidential candidate, Peter Obi’s.

As the ruling party, it was only normal that APC was fingered as the ‘usual suspect’, their corrupt counterparts, PDP has however managed to stay out of the spotlight, leaving APC to face the wrath and backlash of angry Nigerians alone. However, Reportera News investigative reports has revealed that not only APC rigged in the 2023 presidential election, but their longtime opposition, PDP. Peter Obi’s LP who banked on INEC’s promise on delivering a free & fair poll were the victim of Prof Mahmood & INEC’s gross ineptitude.

Whilst APC focused their nefarious activities in remote areas in the North West and South West regions of the country, PDP focused on the South South and the North East, to ‘harvest’ LP votes, primarily. Studies have indicated that Peter Obi’s LP won Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, & Taraba; 3 PDP states, but were unfortunately rigged out of the polls, giving PDP controversial victories in the states. The electoral heist also saw the transfer of LP votes to APC in Benue, Plateau, and Rivers. Nigerians have called for the arrest and criminal prosecution of INEC chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu for electoral, LP has also petitioned the judiciary seeking the annulment of the election by the Court of Appeal which is set to begin trial on 30th May 2023.

This is a developing Story, subscribe to our newsletter to read new episodes of our series; ‘2023 election Audit’.

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Exposed: INEC Didn’t Have To Wipe BVA Data For ‘Storage Space’

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INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu

The 2023 presidential election may have come and gone to some people, it however left a bitter taste in the mouths of most Nigerians who came out in their numbers to vote for their future only for the election results to be systemically rigged in favour of the ruling party, APC. To many, this is a nightmare that they’re hoping they’d wake up from, but to INEC it’s a bone they can’t spit nor swallow; this is because the manner with which the election was rigged is what experts call ‘lazy rigging’ due to the fact that they left far too many loopholes, subsequently leaving a trail of evidence to the public of the travesty disguised as election that occured on February 25th 2023.

This has left INEC in between crossroads as they are torn in the middle of defending the poorly conducted heist or admitting that the poll was flawed. The electoral body has however refused to lean towards the latter, arguing vehemently that they conducted a free & fair election, this obviously is a blatant lie based on the response of Nigerians who mostly feel that the results were rigged.

INEC has been dragged to court by the two main opposition parties, LP and PDP, however it is only the former who actually has a strong grip on their case since evidence has also shown that the latter committed the same electoral fraud that they accuse the ruling party, APC of.

Ekemp M8, the BVA used by INEC

BVA ‘Wahala’

One of the first requests of LP to the court was to have them inspect the BVAs to ensure that the INEC-published-results corresponded with the data available on the devices. However, INEC made a bogus claim that they had to wipe the presidential election results data to make storage space for the gubernatorial polls which happened almost a month after the presidential polls.

The Labour Party led by it’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi which on account of most Nigerians won the election are the major victims of this fraud have approached the courts to retrieve their stolen mandate, one which is expected to upheaval the status quo; in fact, many analysts have postulated that this trial is the biggest in the history of this nation.

In this article, Reportera News takes a deeper look at the device in question to determine if INEC’s claim could be substantiated and most importantly, proven to be truthful. Unfortunately, it isn’t; INEC lied inconspicuously and as a matter of fact, our investigation revealed that the device could handle upto 50 more elections of the same magnitude without needing to erase the data.

Discoveries:

The model of the BVA devices used by INEC is an ‘Ekemp M8’, it’s a biometric tablet with a processor speed of 1.3GHz manufactured by the global electronic powerhouse, Samsung. It comes with a 2 Gigabyte storage space with options that goes upto 8 Gigabytes. The simply interpretation of this information is that the device can accommodate data for 50 different elections without needing a ‘reconfiguration’. This ultimately begs the questions;

what is INEC hiding?

Why are they scared to hand over the BVAs for inspection of it’s content if they affirm that the election was conducted in a free and fair atmosphere?

The answer is simple; there is no correlation between the fraudulently announced results and the results in the BVAs, they just do not match, hence their decision to withhold the device and avert exposing the electoral fraud they committed.

Specs of the Ekemp M8

our IT experts looked at the specifications of this device and have come to a technical conclusion that it was ‘illogical’ to wipe the data since the election would have taken at most 2% of the storage capacity using the average Polling Unit to voters ratio which is 300 voters per polling unit.

According to most Nigerians and available evidence, Peter Obi of LP won the 2023 presidential election

As Nigerians stay focused on the judiciary hoping that the INEC results are annulled unequivocally, INEC and APC have deployed many machineries to consolidate the fraud they did, one of which was Lai Mohammed’s Washington DC trip where he went on international media organization at the behest of his paymasters to spread false information on the election, an action that has received heavy criticism from Nigerians who think that it was a waste of public funds as the announcement could have been made here in Nigeria, albeit faux news.

Verdict:

Our verdict is very clear, there is absolutely no reason for INEC to erase, transfer, or reconfigure the data on the BVA since there was more than enough storage space and most importantly, the BVAs were the subject of investigation for electoral fraud, hence not meant to be tampered with as this could affect the outcome of the case.

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Rivers: Nyesom Wike And Sim Fubara, Rivers State Governor-elect Fight Dirty

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L-R Sim Fubara, Nyesom Wike

A head of May 29, 2023 inauguration, the outgoing governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike and his ‘political son’, and current Governor-elect of the state, Sim Fubara have fallen out, Reportera News has learned.

According to reports from Rivers State, the rift is as a result of disagreement between the duo on the Party’s (People’s Democratic Party) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

According to reports from Rivers State, the rift is as a result of disagreement between the duo on the Party’s (People’s Democratic Party) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

Nyesom Wike political godfather of Sim Fubara

A source told Reportera in Port Harcourt that Wike is fuming that Fubara invited Atiku and other PDP leaders considered to be his enemies to the May 29 inauguration at Portharcourt without his consent. The source said that when confronted, Fubara told his close aides that he wouldn’t want to inherit the enemies of the outgoing governor and wouldn’t want to start fighting political wars early in his administration.

He opted for reconciliation with the party leaders both at the state and national, which didn’t go down well with the Port Harcourt hit man. This has created a huge crack between the two and we were told that Wike is withholding release of funds for the inauguration. The political battle between Wike and Fubara will be interesting.

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