A Federal High Court in Abuja has granted a request filed by a former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, to tender a copy of a recent judgment by the Southwark Crown Court in London, United Kingdom (UK), acquitting her of bribery and other related charges.

Justice Inyang Ekwo granted Alison-Madueke’srequest while ruling on a motion filed on her behalf by the law firm of Mike Ozekhome.

The former minister was on June 17 discharged and acquitted by the UK court following her trial on criminal allegations of bribery and related offences.

Her lawyer, Godwin Iyinbor, who moved the motion yesterday during proceedings in a suit the former minister filed, said it was intended to obtain the court’s permission to file a further/supplementary affidavit to bring fresh evidence before the court on Alison-Madueke’s acquittal in the UK.

Lawyer to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which is the sole defendant in the case, Mofesomo Oyetibo (SAN), said he was served with the motion but was not opposing it.

Oyetibo said the motion was intended to waste the court’s time, noting that it was only meant to notify the court that the ex-minister had been exonerated by a UK court.

After granting the ex-minister’s request, Justice Ekwo announced that the substantive suit and the preliminary objection the EFCC raised would be heard together on the next adjournment date.

He adjourned till October 6.

Alison-Madueke is, in the substantive fundamental rights enforcement suit, challenging, among other things, the public notice the EFCC issued for the public auction/sale of properties and/or personal effects affecting her proprietary rights.

She argued in one of the documents filed in court that a major plank of her case “is that the respondent had sought to visit the applicant with grave proprietary consequences without conviction, without fair hearing, and without strict compliance with the relevant statutory provisions regulating forfeiture, management and disposal of properties”.

It added: “After the filing of the applicant’s processes and, while this suit was still pending before this honourable court, a subsequent and material event occurred, to wit: the applicant was acquitted by the Southwark Crown Court, London, United Kingdom, on June 17, 2026, of criminal allegations of bribery brought against her, a proceeding of obvious material relevance to the allegations repeatedly referenced in relation to the applicant.

“The said subsequent development is material and relevant to the applicant’s case, particularly as it relates to the issues of absence of conviction, fair hearing, due process, propriety of irreversible proprietary deprivation, and the need for strict compliance with statutory safeguards before disposal of properties affecting the applicant’s proprietary rights.”

The former minister said her motion, on which the court ruled yesterday, was not intended to invite the court to sit on appeal over the decision of the UK court or to treat it as automatically conclusive of the proceedings pending in Nigeria.

She said it was meant to place before the court subsequent material fact which would assist the court in doing substantial justice.

Alison-Madueke averred that the development had not occurred when she filed her earlier documents and could not have been pleaded or deposed to earlier.

Source: The Nation News