Nigerian lawyers freshly engaged by the federal government to “help” with the repatriation of $321m stolen by Sani Abacha, former military ruler, will be paid $17m (over N6bn) for their services, TheCable reports.
This amount is nearly thrice more than what was already paid to Swiss lawyer, Enrico Monfrini, for the same job which he was yet to complete before Nigeria mysteriously decided to engage the services of another set of lawyers.
Nigeria’s attorney-general, Abubakar Malami, suddenly appointed Oladipo Okpeseyi, a senior advocate, and Temitope Isaac Adebayo, in 2016 apparently to duplicate the job of the Swiss lawyer.
Incidentally, Okpeseyi and Adebayo were lawyers to the Congress for Progressive Change, the legacy party of President Buhari. Malami was legal adviser to the party.
“We understand the new lawyers are going to be paid $17 million but we are monitoring the situation closely,” an official of EFCC told TheCable.
“If a case of duplication is established, there will be consequences.
This government takes the anti-graft war as a priority, as you well know, and this particular transaction is of interest to us.” Monfrini was initially engaged by the Nigerian government in 2000 and has worked in the recoveries since then.
The FG had, between 2013 and 2014, used the services of the Swiss lawyer to recover the funds in Luxembourg.
