Mohammed Bello Adoke, former
attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, has left Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, for Nigeria after a five-week legal deadlock.
He had been arrested by Interpol
on arrival in Dubai on the morning of November 11 when he went for his
medicals.
Interpol was executing a warrant
of arrest issued against Adoke — even though it had been quashed.
Although the high court of the
federal capital territory issued the warrant on April 17, 2019 based an
application by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the court
vacated the order on October 25, 2019.
While the warrant was sent to
Interpol by Nigeria, the vacating order was not transmitted to the global body.
The Interpol had requested
Adoke’s lawyers to get the Nigerian authorities to attest to the vacating order
but Abubakar Malami, the attorney-general of the federation, refused to endorse
the documents, effectively leaving his predecessor in limbo.
TheCable reports that frantic
efforts made by the EFCC to get Adoke extradited to Nigeria failed because the
request did not meet the legal threshold.
To sidestep the vacated warrant
of arrest, the EFCC also looked at the option of activating the judicial
agreements signed in October 2018 between Nigeria and UAE.
 |
| Dubai police made Adoke sign an undertaking that he chose to return to Nigeria on his own without pressure from them or anybody else |
The agreements cover extradition and transfer of sentenced persons; mutual legal assistance on criminal matters; and mutual legal assistance on criminal and commercial matters.
Again, the EFCC was unable to
pursue that line of action because it has to go through court processes in UAE.
With the logjam running into
weeks, Adoke has opted for voluntary return to the country, repeating an offer
he had made to Interpol when he was arrested.
The police in Duba tried to distance themselves from his return to the
country.
The undertaking signed by Adoke
with the police read: “I would go to NIGERIA authorities to solve my problem,
and without any stress or pressure from Dubai Police or anyone.”
This was apparently because there
was no legal basis to return him to Nigeria.
Adoke was asked to pick the date
of his return to Nigeria and buy the ticket, sources said.
TheCable reports that he bought
the Dubai-Abuja ticket on Monday for the Thursday flight and is expected to
arrive in the afternoon.
Adoke has always maintained that
the EFCC case against him is political, that he did nothing wrong in the OPL
245 affair.
In his book, “Burden of Service:
Reminiscences of Nigeria’s Former Attorney-General”, he 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. 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.
Although the EFCC also charged
Adoke to court for alleged money laundering, he maintained in his book that he
did no wrong and that the transaction in question was a failed mortgage deal
that took place more than two years after the Malabu/Shell/ENI transaction.
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.
The EFCC is insisting that the
mortgage was a bribe because the developer was Alhaji Aliyu Abubakar, who is
also on trial over allegations of sharing bribes in the OPL 245 affair.
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.
Mr 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.
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