Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Minister of Petroleum Resources under President Goodluck Jonathan, has vehemently denied any connection to the $52.5 million recently repatriated to Nigeria from the United States. In a statement released by her legal counsel, Professor Mike Ozekhome (SAN), Alison-Madueke refuted claims of ownership of the funds, often referred to in the media as the “Diezani Loot.”
According to the statement, the money in question does not belong to Alison-Madueke but instead was linked to Nigerian oil magnate Kola Aluko. Alison-Madueke clarified that the funds stemmed from the sale of a yacht, *Galactica*, which had been seized by U.S. authorities from Aluko. The yacht, owned by Aluko, was eventually sold, and the proceeds were repatriated to Nigeria.
The statement, titled “There is no such thing as Diezani Loot”, strongly condemned the ongoing media narrative that ties Alison-Madueke to the alleged financial misdeeds. The former minister’s lawyers emphasized that Alison-Madueke was not involved in the yacht’s purchase, use, or sale, and stressed that she had never even seen the vessel.
Alison-Madueke’s legal team further clarified that the Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) between Kola Aluko, Jide Omokore, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which had been part of the broader controversy, were not awarded under her tenure. They reiterated that she was never in a position to grant such contracts as she was not the Group Managing Director of NNPC.
“The purveyors of this misinformation have deliberately linked her to the yacht sale in a malicious effort to tarnish her reputation,” the statement reads: “My chambers makes this intervention in the public domain as Solicitors to Diezani Alison-Madueke (DAM), the former Minister of Petroleum Resources.
“As her Solicitors, we are fully versed in and conversant with her present ordeal and the entire facts surrounding her matters both here in Nigeria and abroad. So, we write from the vantage position of one that is aware of the cocktail of lies that have been spurned around her cases in the last ten years.
“Many of the narratives are outrightly false; some others sheer outlandish speculations; and most, simply bizzare stories cooked up by her traducers to extract a Shylock’s pound of flesh from her for reasons she does not know and cannot even fathom.
“This intervention therefore seeks to correct this skewed narrative and set the records straight for purposes of history.
“We note with concern the recent deliberate attempt to link her with what has been described as a civil forfeiture of a yacht Galactica, the sale of which was said to have yielded $52.8m to the US government; which sum has since been repatriated to Nigeria.
‘This is a clear example of the mischievous and cruel sport of tarnishing the image of the lady through a bouquet of consistent, persistent and unrelenting cocktail of falsehoods and misinformation.
“The purveyors of this line of misinformation term it “name-and-shame”. To sell the storyline, the architects ensured they attached Diezani’s name to a recovered yacht which is not in any way linked to her.
“They now falsely termed it “Diezani loot”. Nothing of the sort ever happened. She was never involved in the purchase, use and sale of the said yacht.
“The yacht Galactica, from information readily available in the public domain and in open sources, was purchased by Mr Kola Aluko who had used the vessel until he agreed to its forfeiture to the United States of America.
“The yacht Galactica was neither owned nor ever used by our client. DAM has in fact never set her eyes on the yacht. Kola Aluko is an experienced businessman who had been in business well before DAM came into office as HMPR.
“The only tenuous basis for deliberately linking DAM to the said yacht is the false narrative that the Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) which were entered into between Kola Aluko & Jide Omokore’s Atlantic Energy companies and NNPC, were allegedly corruptly awarded to the said companies by DAM.
“DAM was not the GMD of the NNPC as so did not and could not have awarded the said contracts.
“We plead, as her lawyers, with all and sundry that she be accorded fair hearing and that the process of these UK court proceedings be allowed to take their natural course to avoid prejudice to her in the ongoing subjudice UK proceedings against her.
“Those purveyors and peddlers who habitually spin these outrightly false, unfounded, defamatory, unintelligent and indefensible narratives to denigrate and humiliate her should please find better use of their time and leave DAM alone, Ozekhome wrote.
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