Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court, Lagos, has ordered Oba Otudeko to appear in court and take a plea in the N30bn 13-count loan fraud charge filed against him and three others by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
At the hearing of the matter on Monday – earlier today, March 17 – the judge said Otudeko must take his plea before an application challenging the court’s jurisdiction on the case can be heard.
The judge subsequently adjourned the case to May 8.
Other defendants are Stephen Olabisi Onasanya, a former group managing director of FBN; Soji Akintayo, an ex-board member of Honeywell Flour Mills plc and Anchorage Limited, a company linked to Otudeko.
In August last year, Adesuwa Ezenwa, a former relationship manager at First Bank, told the national industrial court that loans worth billions of naira were transferred to companies related to Otudeko even though they were granted in the name of other firms.
The EFCC later charged Otudeko and the other defendants for alleged fraud in January this year (2025).
They were accused of obtaining tranches of loan—N12.3 billion, N5.2 billion, N6.2 billion, N6.1 billion, and N1.5 billion—from First Bank under the pretence that the funds were obtained by some firms.
The anti-graft agency said the credit facilities were obtained between 2013 and 2014.
