The House of Representatives Thursday resolved to set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate the payment of $16.9 million to lawyers by the Attorney-General of the Federation for the recovery of ‘Abacha loot’.
The committee is also to investigate the controversy surrounding the engagement of Nigerian lawyers for a fee of N6 billion after the actual work had been concluded by another set of lawyers.
The Cable reported that Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Finance, refused to approve the payment of $16.9 million fees to two lawyers for the recovery of the loot worth $321 million, adding that she also wrote a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari raising objections to the payment.
But the minister has denied being involved in any controversy over the issue.
Enrico Monfrini, a Swiss lawyer hired by the Federal Government since 1999 to work on recovering Abacha loot, had finished the Luxembourg leg of the job since 2014 when Mohammed Bello Adoke was Attorney-General of the Federation.
Mr Monfrini had also been paid his fees by the Federal Government.
The recovered money was then domiciled with the Attorney-General of Switzerland, pending the signing of an MoU with Nigeria to avoid the issues of accountability around previous recoveries.
All that was left after the signing of the MoU was a government-to-government communication for the money to be repatriated to Nigeria.
But Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, engaged the services of another set of lawyers in 2016 for a fee of about N6 billion.
The lawyers are Oladipo Okpeseyi and Temitope Adebayo who both worked for President Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a legacy party of the All Progressive Congress (APC) when Mr Malami was the legal adviser of CPC
At Thursday’s plenary, some of the lawmakers who spoke on the matter described Malami’s engagement of the lawyers as “height of injustice”.
The deliberations followed a motion raised by Mark Gbillah, from Benue state, asked the house to carry out a “forensic investigation” on the issue to unravel the circumstances surrounding the controversial deal.
“It will be a conflict of interest if proven that the minister has initial relationship with the Nigerian lawyers,” he said.
Nkem Abonta, from Delta state, wondered why Malami would want to allegedly pay the new lawyers’ services “for service they did not render.”
“Somebody wants to create $16 million free money for no job done, at this era? Why is the AGF engaging another lawyer? What kind of change are we talking about? It is the height of injustice coming from the minister,” he said.
Most of the other lawmakers who spoke also talked about the “extra-budgetary expenses usually arising from the ministry of justice.”
Eugene Agbonayinma, from Edo state, however, cautioned his colleagues against “taking sides” on the matter.
“I am not saying the matter should not be investigated but we cannot stand here to call names… we should not take sides,” he said.
Thereafter, the lawyers asked Buhari to suspend the payment of the money to the Nigerian lawyers.
An ad-hoc committee to investigate the matter is to report back within six weeks.
