Political lobbying is permitted in the United States. It is a paid job. In fact, lobbyists register officially. They are paid millions of dollars to drive narratives, push for policy changes and even promote new laws in America. They work for good men, criminals, terrorists, governments, non-state actors and anyone able to pay their enormous fees to gain access to the White House and Capitol Hill.
Atiku, a man desperate to be Nigeria’s President and making a fourth attempt at that office at a time when his advancing age has fully come to bear, has sought the services of a notorious American lobbyist to penetrate the US government and muddy the name of Nigeria’s current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in the US.
The gun-for-hire he has procured is none other than a certain Karl Von Batten.
When I began to see his posts on social media, I was curious about his identity but did not bother to double-check. I expected, like the average observer, that someone named Von Batten would have Dutch origins, be Caucasian and, of course, be pursuing US and white-related interests on behalf of his current client. Only this weekend did I find out that I had been fooled.
Karl Von Batten is Ikemefuna Okeke. I kid you not. This is not a joke. It is not a story by Chinua Achebe. It is Atiku’s reality—and that of his hired lobbyist.
Dr. Karl-Max Edward Ikemefuna William George Okeke-Von Batten is an Igbo Nigerian immigrant to the United States. Ordinarily, given his names, one might believe that he has ancestral ties to a foreigner or Caucasian. But Ikemefuna’s foreign ties were achieved maritally, not ancestrally.
Ikemefuna added the surname “Von Batten” after he married a white woman named Elizabeth Von Batten, who is of European origin. This is heard of in only a few cultures, and certainly not in Nigerian or Igbo culture. But a man who is in the business of lobbying and needs to sell a product he does not own would change his identity if the need arose.
Of course, he needed to change his name to appeal to a white audience to whom he intended to sell dirt as luxury. He had to present something branded, fancy and sought-after—even if it was not real.
Atiku is not his first victim. He has taken jobs from the worst of the lot. The DRC government was his last victim. It paid him millions of dollars to secure meetings with powerful people in the US government whom he claimed to know and to spin stories about the country’s mining and mineral resources.
Those who know the DRC know its government’s story—one intertwined with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary and unlawful detention, enforced disappearances, the use of child soldiers and breaches of its people’s fundamental human rights. Nobody clean does business with the DRC government. Governments that want to keep their records clean do not go near it, even with a long spoon. That is where the role of Ikemefuna cum Von Batten comes into play—although he failed to get the job done.
Von Batten also took his German-sounding name to secure a lobbying deal in Somaliland. That relationship did not augur well. The country’s media and politicians criticised him and accused him of exaggerating his influence and operating aggressively against Somaliland’s interests.
None of this should surprise anyone. Ikemefuna, who now prides himself on being Von Batten, claims to have a Master of Science from the University of Oxford, a Master of Arts from Columbia University and a Doctor of Health Administration from A.T. Still University in Kirksville, Missouri. He also lists among his credentials a fellowship from the Royal Society for Public Health. Independent verification from all these institutions shows that he never set foot on their campuses, nor does he possess any of the so-called credentials he bandies about.
To make matters worse, there is no proof of his so-called 20 years’ experience in policymaking.
Unfortunately, Atiku Abubakar, who is himself no stranger to being in bed with these kinds of people, has hired the scammer, Ikemefuna. Remember when Atiku himself was implicated in a bribery case in the US? It became so serious that the US government investigated him for years, and he could not visit the country lest he end up in handcuffs. In the Jefferson case, Atiku is reported to have attempted to bribe his way into getting a deal done in the US. He however got caught.
As Ikemefuna weaves another web of lies and concoctions for Atiku in America—just as his identity has itself been a concoction—the chickens have come home to roost, and the truth is now open to public debate. Despite his splashing Atiku’s dollars across Capitol Hill, the US government is fully backing the Tinubu-led administration. President Trump even wrote a letter to President Tinubu commending him for their joint war against terrorism and the progress the two countries were achieving together.
Having failed at this, the lobbyist is now attempting to bring out long-abandoned court documents that he believes may smear President Tinubu’s name as the 2027 elections approach. Just as Atiku was caught years ago in the Jefferson case, his thug-for-hire has been caught in his own web. His dodgy identity is now in the public glare, and he has been exposed for the scammer and fraudster that he is.
— Nathaniel Adoji is a journalist, he writes from Abuja
