At the Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former petroleum minister, attempted to modify a lawsuit she had filed against the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) contesting the ultimate forfeiture of her confiscated assets.
Through her attorney, Godwin Iyinbor of Prof. Mike Ozekhome’s chambers, Alison-Madueke informed trial judge Justice Inyang Ekwo during Thursday’s hearings that he had received processes from the anti-graft agency and had responded with an additional affidavit. The attorney told the court that the commission had been properly served and that they had submitted a motion to change their procedures.
The presiding judge was reportedly attending a seminar at the National Judicial Institute in Abuja, thus the case, which was originally set to be heard on October 7, 2024, was postponed until November 21, 2024. In the case marked FHC/ABJ/CS/21/2023, which was filed on January 6, 2023, Diezani, through her attorney, Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN, sued the EFCC.
She requested a court order extending the time for her to request permission to challenge the anti-graft agency’s public notice to hold a public sale on her property.
She claimed that the different orders “ought to be set aside ex debito justitiae” because they were issued without jurisdiction and that she was not served with the charge sheet and proof of evidence in any of the charges nor any other summons regarding the criminal charges brought against her and maintained that the courts were misled into making several final forfeiture orders on her assets through suppression or non-disclosure of material facts.
According to the former Minister, “The several applications upon which the courts made the final order of forfeiture against the applicant were obtained upon gross misstatements, misrepresentations, non-disclosure, concealment and suppression of material facts and this honourable court has the power to set aside same ex debito justitiae, as a void order is as good as if it was never made at all.
“The orders were made without recourse to the constitutional right to a fair hearing and right to property accorded the applicant by the constitution. The applicant was never served with the processes of court in all the proceedings that led to the order of final forfeiture,” she argued.
Diezani also said, she was not given a fair hearing in the proceedings that led to the issuance of the orders and argued that the orders were issued in breach of her right to a fair hearing.
According to Zaki, the investigation conducted by his team clearly showed that the former minister was involved in some acts of criminality.
In the charge marked: FHC/ABJ/CR/208/2018, dated November 14, 2018, the anti-graft agency claimed that most of the depositions in Diezani’s suit were untrue.
Hinging his argument on an attached document in the applicant’s affidavit marked Exhibit C, Zaki said contrary to her deposition in the affidavit filed in support of the suit, most of the cases which led to the final forfeiture of the contested property “were action in rem, same was heard at various times and determined by this honourable court.”
He added that the courts ordered the commission to do a newspaper publication inviting parties to show cause why the said property should not be forfeited to the Federal Government before final orders were made.
Zaki said one Nnamdi Awa Kalu represented the ex-minister in reaction to one of the forfeiture applications.
“We humbly rely on the judgment of Justice I.L.N. Oweibo dated 10th September 2019, shown in Exhibit C of the applicant’s affidavit,” he said.
The officer said, contrary to Diezani’s claim, the final forfeiture of the assets, which were subject to the present application, was ordered by the court in 2017, adding that this was not set aside or upturned on appeal.
According to him, the properties had been disposed of through due process of law.
According to Abdulrasheed Bawa, a former EFCC chairman, the former minister had over 80 properties and $153 million retrieved.
After leaving her position as petroleum minister, which she held from 2010 to 2015 under former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, she was accused of fleeing to the UK and staying there.
