Olushola Omogbehin
A London court has discharged a former Minister of Petroleum Resources in Nigeria, Diezani Alison-Madueke of all six bribery-related charges.
The court sitting in Southwark Crown Court found her not guilty of five counts of accepting bribes and a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery.
Alison-Madueke who served as Nigeria’s oil minister under former President Goodluck Jonathan between 2010 and 2015 was accused of receiving lavish benefits and enjoyed what they described as “a life of luxury” in London, funded by oil and gas industry figures seeking favourable treatment and lucrative contracts in Nigeria’s petroleum sector.
The prosecutors said the benefits were provided to her in exchange for influence over government decisions and contract awards but Madueke denied the allegations.
During a press release, the defence lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw said “Diezani Alison-Madueke was cleared of six charges of bribery at Southwark Crown Court on 17 June 2026, after a five-month trial.”
The trial was brought by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), which targets serious organised and international crime, after a years-long investigation concerning alleged offences between 2011 and 2015.
Laidlaw told the jury at the London court in January that there was a “gross delay” in the charges being brought, resulting in “a great deal of material which would have established her innocence” being denied.
She had been accused of accepting “financial or other advantages” from individuals linked to two energy companies that had secured contracts with Nigeria’s state-owned petroleum corporation when she was the country’s oil minister.
Her defence maintained that records proving her innocence had “disappeared” and that she could no longer access papers at home in Nigeria as her passport had been retained by British police since her first arrest 11 years ago.
Madueke has been involved in numerous legal cases around the world, including in the United States. In Britain, she has been on bail since she was first arrested in October 2015. In 2023, she was formally charged with accepting bribes, which she denied.
