Southwark Crown Court, London: If the name sounds familiar in Nigeria, that is probably because it is where former Delta State Governor James Ibori became the face of Nigerian corruption in 2012.
Ibori pleaded guilty to 10 charges of fraud and money-laundering committed during his eight-years tenure as governor and received a 13-year jail sentence.
Fourteen years later, and in the same Courtroom 14 in which the former London Wickes DIY store cashier’s confiscation proceedings were heard, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria’s former oil minister, was last week acquitted of five counts of accepting bribes and a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery.
Emerging from the court, she offered her gratitude to God. “It has been a hard journey, but I tell you this, God will always do as he will,” she said. “God will be God and God is not a man that he should lie; when he promises you something, he will see it through.”
The former Minister had been seeking God’s intervention for years. “I feel sorry for her,” one Nigerian told The Guardian in Southwark in 2023. “She told me, ‘I need prayers,’ and to ‘please pray for me.’”
