Chief Lateef Fagbemi, SAN who is Nigeria’s Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, has officially submitted a warrant of arrest and request to the Crown Prosecution Services of the United Kingdom for the urgent extradition of a former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the request which was made on the orders of President Bola Tinubu followed a written official request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to the office of the AGF earlier in the month.
In making the extradition request, the office of the AGF cited 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 otherwise known as “The Scheme,” a multilateral treaty which governs extradition between the United Kingdom and Nigeria.
‘The EFCC established a prima facie case against Allison-Madueke in a letter to the office of the AGF, after which a magistrate was ordered to issue a warrant of arrest. The certified true copy of the warrant of arrest was then attached to the extradition request written to the UK government by the AGF on the orders of the President,” a source in the Justice Ministry noted.
However, it was further revealed that 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.
‘It is true that 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 their laws, and other international institutional bottlenecks that are in place in the UK.
‘So, it is the UK that’ll determine how fast Diezani will be returned to Nigeria,’ another top Federal Government source told newsmen.
The commission further revealed that the money laundering charges for which Alison-Madueke is answerable to the EFCC, covered jurisdictions in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Nigeria.
In August, the UK’s National Crime Agency said it suspected Alison-Madueke had accepted bribes in return for awarding multi-million-pound oil and gas contracts.
A Federal Government source who spoke with our correspondent on the condition of anonymity had revealed that 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 alleged that the former minister in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan from 2010 to 2015 stole $2.5bn from the Nigerian government while she was a minister.
In January 2023, Alison-Madueke asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to vacate an order granted to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for final forfeiture of her seized assets.