Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday warned a former Attorney-General of the Federation, Bello Adoke, to cease further mention of his name in the controversial $1.1 billion Malabu Oil deal.
In an exclusive interview with Premium Times from Addis Ababa, the former president said he considered the controversial award of OPL 245 oil field licence as the “height of corruption,” and, as such, could not have participated in negotiations that led to it.
“I don’t support that kind of conduct,” Mr. Obasanjo said in his first reaction to the intercontinental oil scandal that has haunted three administrations for nearly a decade.
The rebuttal came a day after Mr. Adoke distributed excerpts of a petition he sent to the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, alleging victimisation and persecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Mr. Adoke told his successor to call the anti-graft agency to order because he was not the only official who acted on behalf of Nigeria in brokering the Malabu Oil deal with international oil majors that included Shell and Eni.
He specifically mentioned Mr. Obasanjo’s name, alongside his two successors and their appointees.
“I believe it is your responsibility to explain to the public who are being sold a fiction that the transaction started from President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR under whose administration the Terms of Settlement were brokered with Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN, as the then Attorney General who executed the Terms of Settlement before the tenure of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR who approved the final implementation of the Terms of Settlement and my humble self who executed the resolution agreements,” Mr. Adoke said in the petition dated March 6.
“This is more so as the settlement and its implementation were situated in the Federal Ministry of Justice,” he added.
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