TheCable

A federal capital territory (FCT) high court has granted the application of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to detain Mohammed Adoke, former attorney-general of the federation (AGF), for 14 additional days.

A.O. Musa, a judge, granted the request of the anti-graft agency on Thursday.

Adoke has been in custody of the EFCC since he arrived the country on December 19.

The former AGF is accused of financial misconduct in granting oil prospecting licence (OPL) 245 to Shell and ENI.

The OPL 245 was first was first awarded to Dan Etete, a former minister of petroleum resources, by the late Sani Abacha, a military ruler.

The former petroleum minister had later transferred it to Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO) but the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo revoked it.

However, Etete’s Malabu Oil and Gas company reclaimed OPL 245 after litigation in 2006.

Dissatisfied, Shell challenged the decision in court and a settlement agreement was reached under the Goodluck Jonathan administration which saw Shell and ENI buying the oil block from Malabu in the sum of $1.1billion.

The EFCC said its probe into the deal revealed crimes that border on conspiracy, forgery of bank documents, bribery, corruption and money laundering to the tune of over $1.2 billion.

It was based on this that criminal charges were filed against Adoke, Etete. These cases are pending before the FCT high court and the federal high court, Abuja.

Adoke has always maintained that the EFCC case against him is political, that he did nothing wrong in the OPL 245 affair.

In “Burden of Service: Reminiscences of Nigeria’s Former Attorney-General”, a book he wrote before his return to Nigeria in December, Adoke said all he did was to give legal advice on the validity of a court-ordered settlement in 2006 between the federal government and Malabu over the disputed all block.

He said not a kobo of the money touched his hand as the loan was paid directly to the developer by the bank and the developer refunded the money directly to the bank when Adoke failed to complete the payment.

In 2017, he went to court to seek a judicial pronouncement on his involvement, and the court ruled that he cannot be held liable for carrying out lawful presidential orders in accordance with certain sections of the constitution. The government did not appeal against the judgment.

The EFCC and the police had conducted extensive searches of Adoke’s houses in Kano and Okene, Kogi state. Nothing was reported found.

Two people who testified before a Milanese court trying Shell and ENI over allegations of sleaze in the OPL 245 appeared to absolve Adoke of partaking in the reported bribery scheme.

Ednan Tofik ogly Agaev, a former Russian ambassador to Colombia, said he was pressured to mention a name in his interrogation by the FBI — he randomly mentioned Adoke. He refused to adopt the statement he made to FBI in court.

Vincenzo Armanna, a former ENI manager who is also on trial, told the same court that, in fact, Adoke threatened to arrest and prosecute ENI officials for negotiating kickbacks in the deal now regarded as the biggest corporate sleaze in history.

Adoke left Nigeria in June 2015 after the expiration of the tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan and enrolled for an advanced LLM in public international law with specialisation in international criminal law at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.