The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi, has disclosed that over $110 million assets recovered from various countries have been returned to the country.
Fagbemi who spoke on Tuesday – yesterday, January 14 -when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Justice, explained that the recovered assets include the $52.88 million linked to former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke.
The ministry has developed a template for agreement for foreign transactions, the AGF further disclosed, noting that while State governments are at liberty to engage in foreign transactions, sub-national governments are not recognized in case there is arbitration.
He assured that measures are being put in place to ensure that agreements between States and foreign entities are properly signed, explaining that there have been instances where the Ministry declined to approve agreements between foreign agencies and Nigerian groups.
Fagbemi, while speaking on a judgment obtained against the government, stated that in the case of the “popular case of P&ID, there were so many issues involved, including engaging lawyers that were not up to the task.
“Some of these commercial transactions are not given to friends or lawyers merely because they are friends. They must be people who have capacities in terms of training, in terms of experience and we have learnt our lessons in this regard,” he said.
“So, we are trying our best to ensure that those we engage are those with certified advisory given to us during the P&ID case, that whenever you want to give cases out, you don’t do it out of patronage, we look at the competence of the counsel involved.
“For instance, the mere fact that you are a constitutional lawyer in Nigeria does not make you a good commercial lawyer or an arbitrator offshore or even here, so this one we have taken care of,” he said.
The Committee chairman, Olumide Osoba, while speaking on the review of the ministry’s 2024 budget, frowned at the failure of the Ministry to provide details on the utilisation of N4.7 billion reportedly spent on legal services during the period under review.
Osoba said:Â “You know it is sad to experience a situation or situations in which people come here to take our money and still want the seat of arbitration outside Nigeria and the relevant laws that govern their transactions to be laws in England. So, they have to choose to do business with us, take our money and also comply with our own laws here.
“And so, we have the arbitration and prosecution Act which was passed into law in 2023. This has significantly impacted our fortunes in this regard. “
