“The Talented” Mr. Karl Marx Von Batten: US Lobbyist Allegedly Paid $1.2 Million By Atiku Abubakar, Using Multiple Aliases And Fabricated Academic Credentials, By Ademola Bello
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what truthfulness is.” What is the truth? The irony of a criminal trying to catch a criminal is situational irony. When I found out that our former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the man of immense wealth and power, the man whose previous chieftaincy title, “Turaki” of Adamawa, was transferred to his son, Aliyu, no matter whose ox is gored, and without minding the nepotism effect. The man was then elevated to the high-ranking traditional title “Waziri” of Adamawa, meaning a high-ranking officer or general in charge of the royal house and the Emir’s confidant. I was in mourning about the State of Nigeria; my reaction was like a rapture and emptiness, as if the end of the world had come, when I found out that Atiku Abubakar paid $1.2 million to an unvetted “Shoeshine Boy” Washington Lobbyist. Why do Nigerian politicians keep on making dumb decisions? Why pay $1.2 million to a greenhorn with no track record of success as a lobbyist? Why not spend that money to support poor women and children who are victims of Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria? So, our former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a man whose term as Vice President under President Olusegun Obasanjo ended in May 2007, which was nineteen years ago, it is baffling that such a man who spent most of his 80 years on earth in public service still has immense treasure and wealth, like the man called Qarun in the Quran, to give away without blinking his eyes.
Incredibly, Atiku gave away $1.2 million like that as a gift. He needs to fire people on his team who asked him to hire and pay a hustler as a lobbyist. They sabotaged his campaign. This is like a story from the Hollywood crime comedy “Catch Me If You Can.” Mr. Atiku Abubakar hired a wannabe with no track record as a lobbyist, whom he paid $1.2 million US dollars, a Nigerian-born, naturalized US citizen lobbyist whose real name is Ikemefuna Okeke, to help him lobby the US government to boost his reputation and to dig dirt on President Bola Tinubu’s alleged drug-dealing past. (I will touch on that later in this article to separate the fact from fiction). President Tinubu is the frontrunner in Nigeria’s January 2027 Presidential election. Atiku is his main rival.
Is Mr. Ikemefuna Okeke the right messenger for Atiku to hire as a lobbyist? Or is he just a loudmouth empty vessel that makes the most noise? Is Mr. Ikemefuna Okeke speaking the truth or telling lies? By hiring a man with so much baggage like Mr. Ikemefuna Okeke, Atiku Abubakar essentially buried himself politically like an “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” written by Thomas Gray. Atiku Abubakar showed his lack of judgment and unfitness to be Nigeria’s President. And people like Chief Dele Momodu, who is an Adviser to Atiku Abubakar, should be highly embarrassed and ashamed that, as an intellectual on Atiku’s campaign, he should take responsibility by not demanding more powers inside the campaign, and they all dropped the ball by hiring a “Shoeshine Boy” as a lobbyist. They hired Ikemefuna Okeke, a grifter who lied that he is a 9/11 survivor.
They hired a man who lied that he attended Columbia, Oxford, Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Edinburgh. A man who lied that President Trump appointed him to a White House position. They hired a lobbyist who has a history of domestic violence in the United States. Ikemefuna Okeke was convicted and sentenced to jail for 180 days for physically assaulting his then-girlfriend, Cynthia D Murphy.
Mr. Atiku Abubakar, and people who surrounded him, like Mr. Dele Momodu, showed reactionary decision-making by not hiring a Real Insider Washington Lobbyist and instead paying $1.2 million to Ikemefuna Okeke; they demonstrated to us that Atiku, who wanted to campaign on Change against President Tinubu, would not surround himself with rights experts. His decision-making will be based on the whims of social media. Atiku also showed and demonstrated to Nigerians his inability to handle pressure, his vulnerability, his psychology, and his deep-seated personal insecurity as a politician, a perennial presidential candidate who is afraid of losing another presidential election where he would be caged and hammered inside a Mixed martial arts enclosure. Instead of talking about issues and showing real contrast for Nigerians yearning for change and credible, formidable opposition against President Tinubu, Atiku decided to do what a typical Nigerian politician knows how to do. He surrounded himself with Echo-Chamber “yes-men’ sycophants, and manipulators who hired a grifter lobbyist. Possibly an insider campaign for a corrupt job to share the money with the weak lobbyist.
Ikemefuna Okeke fits the description of a grifter and con artist; he lied in a Social Media post, according to the article published by Daily Times of Nigeria and other outlets, that he is a 9/11 Survivor and investment banker. “In a social media post, he described himself as a young immigrant investment banker working on the 39th floor of the World Trade Center in 2001. Inspired by the enlisted in the US military, serving in the National Guard Bureau in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.”https://dailytimesng.com/who-is-karl-von-batten-the-enigmatic-lobbyist-behind-atikus-1-2m-us-strategy/
Ikemefuna Okeke also claimed that he is a US government official who served in the Biden White House, and he recently falsely claimed President Trump appointed him to a position in the White House. This recent claim, which he posted through his own press release on social media, was widely reported by the Nigerian press and falsely reported by French AFP.
Ikemefuna Okeke rebranded himself and changed his name identity to Karl Von Batten to sound more aristocratic, like German, Austrian, and British royal families’ names, after he was convicted of misdemeanor assault in a domestic violence case against his former girlfriend, Cynthia D Murphy ( Mr. Ikemefuna Okeke second girlfriend, a white woman mentioned in this court case as Katy Elizabeth Gaire, also rebranded herself Elizabeth Von Batten after she married Mr. Ikemefuna Okeke alias Karl Marx Von Batten. [https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/dc-court-of-appeals/1142911.html]
“Factual Background”
“In April 2003, Ms. Murphy and Mr. Okeke began a romantic relationship. They started to have trouble in their relationship a few weeks prior to July 4, 2003. On July 4, 2003, Mr. Okeke invited Ms. Murphy to attend a Fourth of July party at his apartment. Both Ms. Murphy and Mr. Okeke consumed alcohol at the party. At some point in the evening, Ms. Murphy and Katy Elizabeth Gaire, Mr. Okeke’s roommate, went into the bathroom to talk privately. When Ms. Murphy told Ms. Gaire that she and Mr. Okeke were involved in a romantic relationship, Ms. Gaire said, “now that I know that, you need to know that within the past two weeks since I’ve moved in ․I’ve slept with [Mr. Okeke] four or five times.” After receiving this news, Ms. Murphy became very emotional and began to cry and yell. Mr. Okeke then burst through the bathroom door and began arguing with Ms. Murphy and told her three or four times to “Get the F [expletive] out of his house.” Ms. Murphy was sitting on the edge of the bathtub when Mr. Okeke lunged at her, and she fell into the tub. During the argument, Ms. Murphy ran into Mr. Okeke’s bedroom. Inside the bedroom, Mr. Okeke dragged Ms. Murphy by her legs and arms; repeatedly hit her in the face (including her eye); kicked her in her legs and on her buttocks; and pushed her up against the wall. While he was assaulting her, Mr. Okeke repeatedly asked her to leave.”https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/dc-court-of-appeals/1142911.htm
According to my own investigation, Ikemefuna Okeke used nine different names; among them are Karl Von Batten, Von Batten-Montague-York, Karl Marx Edward, and William George Okeke-Von Batten. Mr. Ikemefuna Okeke lied about having attended Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, Cornell, the University of Edinburgh, and New York Institute of Technology. etc.
Through my investigation of his ResearchGate Profile, I saw that he misled academics and researchers into believing that he is a faculty member of the Columbia University Mathematics Department. He used the fake name (Karl Von Batten). Ikemefuna Okeke also falsely claimed that he earned a Doctor of Health Administration (DHA) from Columbia University. A quick search shows that Columbia University does not offer a Doctor of Health Administration (DHA).
On his ResearchGate Profile, Ikemefuna Okeke, also using the fake name (Karl Von Batten), made another false claim that he is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH) at Columbia University. FRSPH is a prestigious UK-based professional distinction. Some professors at Columbia University may hold this prestigious FRSPH fellowship, and he may be falsely impersonating them. *** Ikemefuna Okeke claimed to be a healthcare expert; one 2021 Ethiopian newspaper article speculated that he might have impersonated Dr. Tedras Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s Director, and if further investigations are done, the research articles that he claimed to have written under his pseudonym are probably the articles written by other scholars or WHO and other experts. There are fraudulent fake accounts on ResearchGate, LinkedIn, and Academia.edu.
On his LinkedIn Profile, he has used names such as Karl Marx, Edward Ikemefuna William George, and Karl Marx Okeke- Von Batten.
This is a man who fabricated his academic degrees, a man who rebranded himself after he was convicted of domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend by using nine different names as a lobbyist.
He has posted pictures of himself with politicians, including President Trump, Eric Trump, and Senator Tim Scott. Some of his pictures with President Trump appeared to be AI-generated
Finally, one Nigerian newspaper claimed that, in the documents that Ikemefuna Okeke submitted to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) as a lobbyist in 2026 for Atiku, he paid him $1.2 million under the Foreign Registration Act (FARA). He used the following names: Karl Marx, Edward Ikemefuna William George Okeke-Von Batten of Von Batten-Montague-York, LLC. In that document, he left out the mandatory portion: when and how he acquired US citizenship.
In his 2022 engagement for Somaliland, he used another variation of the name. Since he is not a lobbyist with a strong track record, he fired off social media posts full of innuendo, pomposity, and outlandish claims to draw attention to himself, such as when he claimed the Tinubu government wanted to bribe him with $3 million. A Nigerian newspaper fact-checked that as not true.https://factcheckafrica.net/fact-check-did-tinubu-administration-offer-us-lobbyists-3m-to-stop-campaign-against-president/
Finally, regarding Tinubu’s case, the 1993 forfeiture of $460,000 from bank accounts linked to Tinubu. It was a civil case; you don’t need to be a Yale, Stanford, or Harvard Law School professor to understand that. But since many Nigerians like rationalization, cognitive dissonance, and the “lying to yourself’ illogical fallacy, they will not accept the fact that it was a civil case. They will keep arguing that it was a criminal case. They believe what they want to believe. I read Tinubu’s court documents; Tinubu was not charged, and he was not convicted in that case. Of course, what he did may be immoral or unethical. But the case was a civil case known as an “In rem action. The civil forfeiture was against the property. The government sued and seized the physical item, the cash. There is no conviction; Tinubu was not charged or convicted. That is why the case against Tinubu was civil. If it were a criminal case, he would be charged. Cornell Law School has a complete breakdown of civil forfeiture and criminal forfeiture, where the person gets charged. Cornell Law School website wrote the following paragraphs:
“Under civil forfeiture laws, law enforcement agencies may seize cash, vehicles, real estate, and other assets believed to be involved in or obtained through illegal conduct. The proceeding is inrem, meaning it is brought against the property itself rather than against the owner (in personam). For this reason, civil forfeiture case names often appear strange, such as UnitedStates v. Eight Rhodesian Stone Statuesbecause the property is thedefendant.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture
