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Nigeria's Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, has filed a warrant of arrest to the Crown Prosecution Services of the United Kingdom seeking an urgent extradition of a former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke.
The extradition request was made at the instance of President Bola Tinubu, following a written official request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to the office of the AGF earlier in October, per Sunday PUNCH.
It was gathered that, in making the extradition request, the AGF cited Section 2 (2) of Nigeria’s Extradition Act, CAP E25, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and the London Scheme of Extradition within the Commonwealth, otherwise known as “The Scheme.”
The latter legislature is a multilateral treaty which governs extradition between the United Kingdom and Nigeria.
“The EFCC established a prima facie case against Alison-Madueke in a letter to the office of the AGF, after which a magistrate was ordered to issue a warrant of arrest. The certified true copy of the warrant of arrest was then attached to the extradition request written to the UK government by the AGF on the orders of the President,” a presidency source told the paper.
However, the delay in Alison-Madueke's extradition to Nigeria from the UK has been attributed to an ongoing internal review of the request by the UK authorities.
“It is true that the AGF has submitted a warrant of arrest and written to the UK government for Diezani’s extradition to Nigeria, but extradition processes are usually cumbersome as it is subject to the approval of the recipient country.
"Nigeria has made its request, but the UK has to subject it to their laws, and other international institutional bottlenecks that are in place in the UK.
“So, it is the UK that’ll determine how fast Diezani will be returned to Nigeria,” the report stressed.
The EFCC levelled a 13-count charge bordering on money laundering against Alison-Madueke, and the commission said in early October that it had commenced a process of extraditing her from the UK to Nigeria to face the charges.
The anti-graft agency also accused the former minister of stealing $2.5bn from the Nigerian government while heading the petroleum minister between 2010 and 2015 under former President Goodluck Jonathan.