Allegations of financial misconduct against me as petrol minister true, says Diezani Madueke

The allegations of financial misconduct during my tenure as the petroleum minister are true. The former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Allison-Madueke was quoted to have said so while pleading for leniency from president Bola Tinubu.

“I would like President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Nigerians to forgive me, allow me to return home, and contribute because life is transient.” the statement further added.

On Saturday, the Nigerian anti-graft agency, EFCC, got wind of the statement and escalated it on the social media platform that Alison-Madueke implored Tinubu to permit her to return to Nigeria to confess alleged financial misdeeds for the period she was minister.

The social media post earlier seen by Punch and other new media correspondents claimed that the former minister spoke in an interview with journalists in the United Kingdom.

However, further checks by our correspondent on Saturday revealed that the unsigned post had been pulled down from the anti-graft agency’s official Instagram handle.

Meanwhile, when contacted over the development, the spokesperson for the EFCC, Dele Oyewale, denied the report, while noting that the report didn’t emanate from nor was it signed by the anti-graft agency.

“The report is not from the EFCC. Anything that is not signed by me is not from us (the EFCC),” Oyewale said.

The PUNCH reports that Allison-Madueke who served under former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration fled the country following her prosecution by the EFCC over alleged money laundering.

In October 2023, Sunday PUNCH exclusively reported that the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, submitted a warrant of arrest and request to the Crown Prosecution Services of the United Kingdom for her extradition.

The report indicated that the request which was made on the orders of President Bola Tinubu followed a written official request by the EFCC to the office of the AGF earlier in October.

A top Federal Government source had revealed that 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 had noted.

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