Dear Gilbert,
We are not strangers. I met you many years ago at Bernard Calil’s first wedding. You are a friend of my sister. Our late fathers were friends. Members of your extended family in England are friends of mine to this day. So let nobody tell you this letter is a racist attack, or the work of a fly-by-night critic looking for attention. It is neither. It comes from a man who does not tolerate nonsense where his country is concerned, and whose father helped lay down the law of that country. Nothing here is personal. It is politics, and it is overdue.
I have questions. The Nigerian people have the same ones.
First: what are your intentions with Nigeria? Your group holds the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, awarded without open competitive bidding. It holds Eko Atlantic on a concession that runs for generations. It holds port contracts backed by foreign export credit. No private family in our history has been handed so much public wealth with so little public explanation. What is the end of it?
Second: why does your name keep arriving with a court file attached? In 2000 a Geneva court convicted you in connection with the Abacha funds; you paid a fine and returned tens of millions of dollars to Nigeria, and I note the conviction was later expunged. In the United States you paid $1.8 million to resolve a Justice Department investigation into illegal campaign contributions. You admit no wrongdoing and I record that. But an honest man is entitled to ask why the pattern repeats.
Third: what is your relationship with Hezbollah? The United States denied you a visa in 2015 on terrorism-related grounds, reportedly over money said to have reached Hezbollah through Lebanese political allies. You called that false and you sued the American government to clear your name. Good. Then clear it before Nigerians as well. Tell us plainly: have you, your companies or your family ever funded, directly or indirectly, that organisation or anyone fronting for it?
Fourth: how many passports does one Nigerian need? You carry a Lebanese passport. You carry a diplomatic passport of Saint Lucia, whose ambassador you are. You are reported to hold a British passport as well. That is three foreign flags in one pocket, and still you present yourself to us as a Nigerian citizen and accept our second-highest national honour. Section 25 of our Constitution reserves citizenship by birth for those with a parent or grandparent from a community indigenous to Nigeria. Everyone else comes in by registration or naturalisation, and Section 28 says such a citizen forfeits Nigerian citizenship if he acquires or retains the nationality of another country of which he is not a citizen by birth. Lebanon you may claim by blood. But Britain? Saint Lucia? You were not born a citizen of either. So where are your naturalisation papers? On what date were they issued, and by whom? When did you acquire the British passport, and did you declare it to the Nigerian authorities? Which citizenships did you renounce, and when? A holder of the GCON should be able to answer that in an afternoon. And if the answer is that you renounced nothing, then tell us by what law you remain a Nigerian at all.
Fifth: how many Nigerians hold real power in your companies? Not a president’s son on a board. I mean chief executives, finance directors, the people who sign. After half a century of earning from Nigeria, show us the Nigerians you have raised to the top.
Sixth: how much money leaves Nigeria every year for you and your family? You live like a king in Paris, a short drive from the Élysée Palace, while the workers on your sites and the people whose coastline you have reshaped live as they live. Publish the figures: dividends, management fees, loans repaid offshore, all of it.
And so to what I ask of you.
Remove Seyi Tinubu from the board of CDK Integrated Industries. The son of the President who awards your contracts has no business sitting in your boardroom, and you know it.
Open your books. Publish the contracts, the concession agreements, the beneficial ownership of every vehicle in your group. If you are indeed a patriotic Nigerian citizen and not a vulture, transparency will cost you nothing.
Tell us what you are trying to prove, and why you believe you will get away with it. Presidents leave. Records remain. Ask those who thought Abacha would last forever.
I want answers, not a statement from a publicist and not a letter from a lawyer. Enough is enough.
Nigeria belongs to Nigerians.
Kio Amachree
President, Worldview International
Stockholm
The allegations referred to in this letter are matters of public record and published reporting. Mr Chagoury has denied wrongdoing in each instance. The questions posed are questions, not verdicts.
