“You are a man who spent years as the opposition spokesman for Atiku Abubakar, attacking Bola Tinubu and everything his administration stood for Then, in June 2025, you walked into Tinubu’s private residence and turned 360 degrees, I suggest you return to what you are better equipped for: deciding which powerful man’s residence to visit next, and which principles to abandon”
AN OPEN LETTER TO OTUNBA SEGUN SHOWUNMI
A Response to Your Cowardly Defence of Gilbert Chagoury
I have been made aware of your published attack on me in the Punch newspapers, in which you chose to dismiss my documented exposé on Gilbert Chagoury as “misinformation” and to encourage the Chagoury Group to sue me. I am writing this letter to ensure that you understand, in terms you cannot misread, what you have done — and what will happen if you do it again.
Let me first establish who you are, so that Nigerians reading this can calibrate your judgment accordingly.
You are a man who spent years as the opposition spokesman for Atiku Abubakar, attacking Bola Tinubu and everything his administration stood for. Then, in June 2025, you walked into Tinubu’s private residence in Bourdillon on Sallah Day, took a photograph with him, and emerged to announce to Channels Television that “Tinubu is smarter than Peter Obi” and that his brain is “very alert.” You called yourself not anti-Tinubu. The same Tinubu whose government you were paid to oppose. The same Tinubu whose benefactor, Gilbert Chagoury, you now rush to protect.
This is the foundation on which your credibility rests: sand.
You hold an honorary PhD in “Narratology” — a word that apparently means the art of telling whatever story is most convenient for whoever is currently paying attention. You were recruited as Atiku’s spokesman after Reno Omokri reportedly interviewed you and negotiated your salary — a fact that both Omokri and former PDP national publicity secretary Olisa Metuh confirmed publicly, while you, in your characteristic style, dismissed it as “rubbish.” A man who cannot honestly account for how he got his own job is not qualified to audit the journalism of others.
Now let us turn to the substance of what you called misinformation.
Gilbert Chagoury was convicted in a Swiss court in the year 2000 for laundering funds stolen by the late military dictator Sani Abacha. This is not an allegation. This is a court verdict in a jurisdiction governed by the rule of law. The United States denied Chagoury a visa on terrorism-related grounds. This is a matter of U.S. government record. FBI and DEA intelligence reports link Chagoury to suspected financing of Hezbollah. These documents exist. The $12.7 billion in contracts awarded to Chagoury-linked firms — most notably Hitech Construction — without competitive public bidding under the Tinubu administration is documented in the public domain, including by BusinessDay, Sahara Reporters, and international investigative journalists. Leaked documents from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveal that Seyi Tinubu held a majority shareholding in an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands alongside Ronald Chagoury Jr.
Not one word of this is misinformation. Every word of it is on the record.
So I ask you plainly: which part of a Swiss court conviction is misinformation? Which part of a U.S. visa denial on terrorism grounds is a lie? Which part of documented offshore corporate structures is fabrication?
You cannot answer that question. Because there is no answer. You simply chose the side of power over the side of truth — as you have made a career of doing.
You described me as a diaspora Nigerian encouraging a “Lebanese convicted criminal” to attack a prominent Nigerian. Let me be direct about what you actually did: you used language designed to make the telling of documented facts sound like an assault, and you called on a man with a money laundering conviction to use legal instruments to silence a Nigerian journalist and political commentator. That is not commentary. That is the action of someone who has placed themselves in the service of interests hostile to Nigerian accountability.
You should know something about me before you go any further. My father was Chief Godfrey Kio Jaja Amachree QC — Nigeria’s first indigenous Solicitor-General, first African Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Justice, and the first African to serve as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. My grandfather presented the Niger Delta minority case before the Willink Commission in London in 1958. My family built institutions in this country before Ogun State politics existed in its current form. I did not arrive at this fight by accident. I arrived at it by inheritance and by choice.
I am warning you now — clearly, publicly, and on record — that if you publish one further defamatory statement about me, if you make one further false claim that my documented reporting constitutes misinformation, or if you encourage any legal action against me based on falsehood, I will sue you personally in every jurisdiction available to me. I will do so with the full force of legal counsel in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. I will name you, your publication, and any editor who chose to amplify your statements.
You want to talk about lawsuits? I welcome that conversation. But understand that in any court of law, the first thing that will happen is that every document I have cited will be placed into evidence. The Swiss conviction will be entered. The U.S. visa denial grounds will be entered. The ICIJ offshore corporate records will be entered. And then the court will ask you to explain, under oath, what was false.
You will not enjoy that day.
I have written about Nigeria’s governance failures for decades from Stockholm. I have been published by Vanguard, Sahara Reporters, Starconnect Media and elsewhere. I have never been successfully sued for defamation because I do not write defamation — I write documented truth. That is a distinction you would do well to study.
In the meantime, I suggest you return to what you are better equipped for: deciding which powerful man’s residence to visit next, and which principles to abandon on the way there.
Kio Amachree | Stockholm, Sweden | President, Worldview International
