Abuja, Jan. 15, 2025 – Lateef Fagbemi, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, has confirmed the receipt of $110m recovered assets from different countries.
Fagbemi disclosed this on Tuesday during the 2025 budget defence meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Justice.
He said the funds included the $52.88 million recovered from Diezani Alison-Madueke, a former Minister of Petroleum Resources.
The minister said the ministry had developed a template for most of the agreements and shared them with some of the state governments in order to help them to review contracts, adding that that’s where most of the damages and risks were.
He said that although state governments were at liberty to engage in foreign transactions, but the states were not recognised in cases of arbitration.
The minister said only the national government could take up such responsibilities.
He said: “The popular case of P&ID, there were so many issues involved, including engaging lawyers that are 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 who have capacities in terms of training, in terms of 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. That whenever 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 this one we have taken care of.” (GBN)
