•Former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke
A former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, has denied ownership of $52.8 million recently repatriated to Nigeria from the United States of America.
In a statement through her counsel, Prof. Mike Ozekhome (SAN), Mrs. Alison-Madueke insisted there was nothing like ‘Diezani loot’, since she had no hand whatsoever in the issues surrounding the forfeiture of the money by the owner.
The statement released yesterday was under the title, ‘There is no such thing as Diezani loot’.
The former Petroleum Minister under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan clarified that the money linked to her in the media as a loot actually belonged to a Nigeria’s oil magnate, Kola Aluko.
Diezani hinted that the $52.5 million came from a vessel seized by the American government from Kola Aluko and which was later sold and proceeds returned to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
“My chambers makes this intervention in the public domain as solicitors to Diezani Alison-Madueke (DAM), the former Minister of Petroleum Resources.
“As her solicitors, we are fully versed in and conversant with her present ordeal and the entire facts surrounding her matters both here in Nigeria and abroad. So, we write from the vantage position of one that is aware of the cocktail of lies that have been spurned around her cases in the last ten years.
“Many of the narratives are outrightly false; some others sheer outlandish speculations; and most, simply bizzare stories cooked up by her traducers to extract a Shylock’s pound of flesh from her for reasons she does not know and cannot even fathom.
“This intervention therefore seeks to correct this skewed narrative and set the records straight for purposes of history.
“We note with concern the recent deliberate attempt to link her with what has been described as a civil forfeiture of a yacht Galactica, the sale of which was said to have yielded $52.8 million to the US government, which sum has since been repatriated to Nigeria.
“This is a clear example of the mischievous and cruel sport of tarnishing the image of the lady through a bouquet of consistent, persistent and unrelenting cocktail of falsehoods and misinformation.
“The purveyors of this line of misinformation term it “name-and-shame”. To sell the storyline, the architects ensured they attached Diezani’s name to a recovered yacht which is not in any way linked to her.
“They now falsely termed it “Diezani loot”. Nothing of the sort ever happened. She was never involved in the purchase, use and sale of the said yacht.
“The yacht Galactica, from information readily available in the public domain and in open sources, was purchased by Mr. Kola Aluko who had used the vessel until he agreed to its forfeiture to the United States of America.
“The yacht Galactica was neither owned nor ever used by our client. DAM has in fact never set her eyes on the yacht. Kola Aluko is an experienced businessman who had been in business well before DAM came into office as HMPR.
“The only tenuous basis for deliberately linking DAM to the said yacht is the false narrative that the Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) which were entered into between Kola Aluko & Jide Omokore’s Atlantic Energy companies and NNPC, were allegedly corruptly awarded to the said companies by DAM.
“DAM was not the GMD of the NNPC as so did not and could not have awarded the said contracts.
“We plead, as her lawyers, with all and sundry that she be accorded fair hearing and that the process of these UK court proceedings be allowed to take their natural course to avoid prejudice to her in the ongoing sub judice UK proceedings against her.
“Those purveyors and peddlers who habitually spin these outrightly false, unfounded, defamatory, unintelligent and indefensible narratives to denigrate and humiliate her should please find better use of their time and leave DAM alone”, Ozekhome wrote.
