LONDON – In a high-stakes corruption trial unfolding at London’s Southwark Crown Court, 65-year-old Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former Nigerian Minister of Petroleum Resources, has issued a categorical denial of all bribery and conspiracy charges brought against her, pushing back against allegations that she accepted lavish, undeclared perks in exchange for preferential government energy contracts between 2010 and 2015.
Prosecutors from the UK’s law enforcement bodies have laid out six total charges against Alison-Madueke: five counts of accepting improper bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. The prosecution’s case claims that energy firms seeking favorable contract awards from Nigeria’s federal government covered all costs for multi-million-pound luxury residences in the UK, including paying for extensive renovations and furnishings for the properties that Alison-Madueke occupied rent-free.
Beyond free luxury housing, the prosecution alleges the former minister received a suite of other undeclared benefits, including unlimited access to private jets for travel, a permanent chauffeured vehicle, and funded high-end shopping sprees across London. Court documents outline that more than £2 million ($2.7 million) was spent on purchases at Harrods, the iconic Knightsbridge luxury department store, with hundreds of thousands more spent at a high-end antiques dealership and a premium homeware boutique in London’s upscale Mayfair district. Prosecutors also add that Alison-Madueke accepted £100,000 in undisclosed cash payments during her tenure leading Nigeria’s petroleum ministry, a role that gave her direct oversight over Nigeria’s state-owned energy giant, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), as well as its key subsidiaries the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company and Pipelines Product Marketing Company.
Two additional co-defendants are standing trial alongside Alison-Madueke: 54-year-old Olatimbo Ayinde, a Nigerian oil company owner facing two separate bribery charges, and 69-year-old Doye Agama, Alison-Madueke’s brother and a retired archbishop, who denies a single charge of conspiracy to commit bribery. Both have pleaded not guilty to all allegations against them.
Taking the witness stand on Monday, Alison-Madueke firmly rejected every claim put forward by the prosecution. “I did not abuse my office during that period,” she told the court. “I can state categorically at no time did I ask for, take, or seek a bribe or bribes of any sort from any of these persons.”
Addressing the allegations of uncompensated luxury services, the former minister explained that all logistics and financial arrangements for her official work trips to the UK were managed directly by NNPC, and insisted that every benefit arranged for her during these visits was properly reimbursed by the Nigerian state oil firm, leaving no improper unpaid favors from private energy companies.