The government of Bola Tinubu has submitted a warrant of arrest for the former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke. A request for her extradition has also been made to the Crown Prosecution Services of the United Kingdom by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), following a written official request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to the office of the AGF earlier in October.
The extradition request was made under Section 2 (2) of Nigeria’s Extradition Act, CAP E25, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and the London Scheme of Extradition within the Commonwealth, a multilateral treaty that governs extradition between the United Kingdom and Nigeria. The President ordered the submission of the request after the EFCC established a prima facie case against Allison-Madueke in a letter to the office of the AGF.
A magistrate was then ordered to issue a warrant of arrest, and the certified true copy of the warrant of arrest was attached to the extradition request written to the UK government by the AGF on the orders of the President. However, the delay in Allison-Madueke’s extradition to Nigeria from the UK was due to an ongoing internal review of the request by the UK authorities.
The AGF has submitted a warrant of arrest and written to the UK government for Diezani’s extradition to Nigeria, but extradition processes are usually cumbersome as it is subject to the approval of the recipient country. Nigeria has made its request, but the UK has to subject it to its laws and other international institutional bottlenecks that are in place in the UK. Therefore, it is the UK that will determine how fast Diezani will be returned to Nigeria.
An informal interagency collaboration between the EFCC and the UK’s NCA was part of what led to the ongoing trial of Alison-Madueke at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London. The EFCC had on October 2 announced that the extradition of Alison-Madueke from the UK back to Nigeria had commenced over 13-count charges bordering on money laundering leveled against her by the anti-graft agency.
The charges for which Alison-Madueke is answerable to the EFCC cover jurisdictions in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Nigeria. The UK’s National Crime Agency charged her to court in August, suspecting that she had accepted bribes in return for awarding multi-million-pound oil and gas contracts.
Earlier in the month, Alison-Madueke appeared before the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London over an alleged £100,000 bribe. The district judge, Michael Snow, granted Alison-Madueke a £70,000 bail and imposed other terms on her, including an 11 pm to 6 am curfew, an electronic tag to be worn at all times, and a £70,000 surety to be paid before she could leave the court building. Her next court appearance will be at Southwark Crown Court, which deals with serious criminal cases, on October 30.