Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria’s former Oil Minister, told jurors this Monday she did not abuse her position \u200bto seek or take bribes, as she stands trial on \u200ccorruption charges in London.<\/p>\n
Alison-Madueke, Nigeria’s Minister for petroleum resources between 2010 and 2015 under then-President Goodluck Jonathan, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of accepting \u200bbribes and a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery.<\/p>\n
“At no time \u200bdid I ask, take, or seek a bribe or \u2060bribes of any sort, from any of these persons,” Alison-Madueke said, referring \u200bto people named in the charges, adding that she “always sought to act \u200bimpartially” in her post.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Alison-Madueke led a “life of luxury” in London, which included being given high-end properties to stay in and taken on luxury shopping sprees \u200bby people who “clearly believed she would use her influence to favour \u200bthem.”<\/p>\n
Alison-Madueke told jurors that the President knew of her using one of the properties, \u200ca \u2060high-end location in Gerrards Cross, west of London, for discreet meetings.<\/p>\n
Alison-Madueke said that being a woman in such an important role made her a target, describing Nigeria as patriarchal and misogynistic, and that she was told \u200bshe would be \u200bmade a scapegoat \u2060of the administration.<\/p>\n
She also said she organised accommodation at a central London apartment through a company owned \u200bby Nigerian businessperson Kolawole Aluko because the financial structures \u200bof Nigerian \u2060National Petroleum Company’s London office were “in a mess,” and that all expenses were repaid in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Her trial is one of the most high-profile cases \u2060relating to \u200balleged corruption in oil-rich Nigeria, which has \u200blong grappled with mismanagement and corruption preventing its mineral wealth from benefiting the wider population.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16035,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-31744","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Alison-Madueke, Nigeria's Minister for petroleum resources between 2010 and 2015.","published_date":"","news_description":"Alison-Madueke, Nigeria's Minister for petroleum resources between 2010 and 2015.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31747,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31744\/revisions\/31747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=31744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}