Daud Olatunji
A United Kingdom court has cleared former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, of all six counts of bribery brought against her by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), bringing an end to a high-profile corruption trial that lasted five months and followed nearly a decade of investigations.
Alison-Madueke, who served as Nigeria’s oil minister between 2010 and 2015 and later became the first female President of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), was discharged on Wednesday after a jury at Southwark Crown Court found her not guilty of accepting financial or other advantages linked to oil contracts.
Her legal team confirmed that the former minister was cleared of all charges relating to alleged bribes said to have been received between 2011 and 2015 from individuals linked to two energy firms that secured contracts with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) during her tenure.
The NCA had alleged that she enjoyed an “excessive lifestyle” allegedly funded by illicit gains, including luxury chauffeur-driven cars, private jet travel, and renovations to multiple London properties. Prosecutors also claimed she had benefited from financial inducements tied to Nigeria’s lucrative oil sector deals.
However, her defence team argued that the case was built on “stale and incomplete evidence,” insisting that critical documents capable of supporting her innocence were either unavailable or had been retained by authorities following her arrest in 2015.
Lead defence counsel Jonathan Laidlaw told the court that the long delay in bringing charges had severely prejudiced her ability to defend herself, describing the prosecution process as suffering from “gross delay” which led to the loss of key materials.
Alison-Madueke, who has consistently denied all allegations, had been on bail in the United Kingdom since her initial arrest in October 2015. She was later formally charged in 2023 with multiple counts of bribery and conspiracy, all of which she rejected.
Her legal battles have extended beyond the United Kingdom, with related investigations and civil asset recovery proceedings previously initiated in the United States and Nigeria by anti-corruption agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which has pursued the recovery of assets allegedly linked to her tenure.
Born in 1960, Alison-Madueke served as Nigeria’s Minister of Transport before her appointment as Minister of Mines and Steel Development, and later as Minister of Petroleum Resources, where she oversaw major reforms in the downstream oil sector and played a central role in Nigeria’s participation in global oil policy negotiations through OPEC.
She left office in 2015 following a change of administration and has since remained largely outside public view amid ongoing international legal scrutiny.
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