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From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
When Dr. Reuben O. Atabo, SAN, stepped up to the podium on December 18, 2025, as part of activities to mark 36 years of his call to the Nigerian Bar, he used the platform to recount a journey defined by confrontation with power, defence of the powerless, and an unyielding belief that the law must serve humanity.
Called to the Bar on December 14, 1989, Atabo’s legal career has covered the military era, and the turbulence of modern Nigeria. “These years,” he said quietly, “have been years of God’s amazing grace.” But the grace he spoke of was often tested in bitter courtrooms and against formidable political authority.
Among the cases that shaped his career were legal battles between ordinary farmers, dismissed workers, a condemned soldier and the full weight of the Nigerian state.
Standing for farmers against the state
In 2016, 11 peasant farmers along the Kaduna–Abuja Expressway lost 814 hectares of ancestral farmland overnight. Bulldozers moved in. No compensation was paid. The land was later reallocated to multinational agribusinesses.
The farmers turned to Atabo. He filed suit against the Kaduna State Government, insisting that compulsory acquisition without compensation violated both the Constitution and basic human dignity.
Pressure soon followed. According to Atabo, the state’s Attorney General urged him to withdraw the case, warning it was injurious to the government.
He refused to withdraw the case. Years later, the farmers were compensated with alternative farmlands carved from a colonial-era forest reserve. The injustice, Atabo said, “was remedied through the instrumentality of the law.”
For the farmers, it meant survival. For Atabo, it reaffirmed why he became a lawyer.
The case of Durbar Hotel in Kaduna
Perhaps no episode illustrates his career more starkly than the Durbar Hotel saga.
Durbar Hotel Plc, once a landmark in Kaduna, became entangled in privatisation disputes dating back to 2001.
Atabo represented shareholders who challenged the Federal Government’s takeover. They won at the Federal High Court. They won again at the Court of Appeal. The matter went to the Supreme Court.
While those appeals were still pending, bulldozers arrived at night. On January 15, 2020, under the administration of then-Governor Nasir El-Rufai, the hotel was demolished. Valuables were carted away by daybreak. Atabo insists the government acted despite repeated formal notice that the case was before the Supreme Court.
“To demolish property while an appeal is pending,” he had told journalists, “is to take the law into your own hands.”
The demolition was not just about bricks and mortar. About 300 former workers had tied their hopes to the litigation. For them, the destruction symbolised the triumph of raw power over judicial restraint.
When power came for his own office
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Atabo’s defiance, he believes, came at a personal cost. In 2019, the Kaduna State Government revoked the Certificate of Occupancy for his law office on Yakubu Gowon Way, Kaduna. The revocation was backdated by nearly two years and offered no justification.
He went to court again, this time as a litigant. The High Court nullified the revocation, ruling that it was unlawful and unsupported by public interest. “No citizen,” Atabo said, “should be punished for doing his duty as a lawyer.”
Saving a man from the gallows
Beyond property and politics, Atabo recalled the case that still haunts and humbles him. Sergeant Bala Akawu, a Nigerian soldier, had been convicted by court martial and sentenced to death by hanging. By the time Atabo was briefed, the deadline to appeal had passed.
He, however, sought and obtained an extension of time. The conviction was overturned. But Akawu remained in prison, trapped by legal technicalities.
Atabo pressed on to the Supreme Court.
In 2024, Nigeria’s apex court finally ordered Akawu’s freedom. A man once condemned to die walked out alive, free, and reintegrated into society.
“That,” Atabo said, with a firm voice, “is the power of justice pursued to the end.”
Broader warning on national violence
In a sobering turn, Atabo used the occasion to speak beyond his personal cases. He warned that persistent killings in Plateau, Benue, Kogi, and other states bear the hallmarks of genocide under international law.
When communities are repeatedly attacked, farmlands destroyed, and survivors forced into IDP camps, he argued, the state has failed in its most basic duty – protection of life.
“Impunity has replaced accountability. This must end,” he said.
A career defined by resolve
Over 36 years, Atabo has argued cases that now populate Nigeria’s law reports, shaping jurisprudence in property rights, labour law, elections, oil and gas, and fundamental rights. But numbers and citations tell only part of the story.
His true legacy lies in the farmers who returned to their fields, the workers who found vindication, and the soldier who escaped the hangman’s noose.
As he concluded his address, Atabo offered no grand farewell, only a quiet reaffirmation: “I remain resolved to uphold justice without compromise.”
For many whose lives he touched, that resolve made all the difference.
