Burden of Service

In 2011, the Nigerian government brokered a $1.3 billion deal between Royal Dutch Shell, Eni S.p.A. of Italy and Malabu Oil & Gas Ltd of Nigeria for one of Africa's richest oil fields ('OPL 245'). The transaction-finalised after thirteen years of mutual suspicion, bitter litigation, emotional blackmail and dirty intrigues-has caught global attention and attracted criminal proceedings. The middlemen are now in jail and officials of the international oil companies are facing trial in an Italian court over alleged corruption. Mohammed Bello Adoke was the Nigerian Attorney-General who gave the legal advice on the complicated transaction. He saved his country from an impending $2 billion award in favour of Shell by the International Centre for the Settlement of International Disputes (ICSID), an organ of the World Bank. But he has been hounded, victimised, scandalised and forced into exile for his service to his fatherland. In recounting his five-year experience in government, Bello Adoke reveals the details of the billion-dollar oil deal and unveils the web of local and international intrigues, deceit, lies and conspiracy around an avoidable scandal. 

Adoke was variously educated at the Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, the Robert Kennedy University in Switzerland, the University of Nottingham in the UK, and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, England. Adoke served as Nigeria's Attorney-General and Minister of Justice from 2010 to 2015; as Nigeria's Attorney-General, he was a member of the National Council of State, National Defence Council and National Security Council. He was also a member of the prestigious International Law Commission from 2010 to 2016. He is married to Sa'adatu Mohammed Bello, a lawyer and former Attorney-General of Taraba State, and they have six children. Today he lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.