Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) Lateef Fagbemi has confirmed the return of over $110 million in recovered assets from various countries.
Fagbemi stated this at the 2025 budget defence session before the House of Representatives Committee on Justice chaired by Hon. Olumide Osoba.
However, he failed to give a breakdown of the fund, including the $52.88 million in recovered assets linked to former Minister of Petroleum Resources Diezani Alison-Madueke by the United States government.
Fagbemi explained that the ministry has developed a template for most of the agreements and shared it with some state governments to help them review contracts, noting that is where most of the damages and risks are.
He said, “In the popular case of P&ID, many issues were involved, including engaging lawyers who were not up to the task. Some of these commercial transactions are not given to friends or lawyers merely because they are friends. They must be people with capacities in training and experience, and we have learnt our lessons in this regard.
“So, we are trying our best to ensure that those we engage are those with certified advisory given to us during the P&ID case. Whatever you want to give cases out, you don’t do it out of patronage; we look at the competence of the counsel involved.
“For instance, the mere fact that you’re a constitutional lawyer in Nigeria does not make you a good commercial lawyer or an arbitrator offshore or even here, so we have taken care of this.”
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