The senator representing Delta North in the National Assembly, Peter Nwaoboshi, has finally been taken into prison custody after months on the run. He was intercepted by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at a hospital in Lagos on Monday, 6 February 2023, and was remanded to the Ikoyi Custodial Centre on Wednesday, 8 February 2023, to begin his sentence. The EFCC announced the arrest in a statement on its website.
The Court of Appeal, Lagos Division, had convicted Nwaoboshi of two counts of money laundering and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment in a judgment delivered on 1 July 2022. The court also ordered the winding up of his two companies, Golden Touch Construction Project Ltd and Suiming Electrical Ltd, under Section 22 of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2021, and directed that their properties be forfeited to the Federal Government. However, Nwaoboshi did not appear in court at the time of the ruling; instead, he went underground and refused to surrender to the Nigerian Correctional Service. He appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking to have the appellate judgment set aside and to obtain bail pending the determination of his appeal. On 27 January 2023, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed his application. In the lead judgment, Justice Emmanuel Agim questioned why Nwaoboshi, who had refused to submit to the law, was now seeking its indulgence. Justice Tijani Abubakar added that the appellant’s bail application while on the run was unacceptable, emphasizing that “nobody is above the law” and that respect for the rule of law must be upheld.
The Court of Appeal’s conviction followed an EFCC appeal against an earlier judgment by Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke of the Federal High Court in Lagos, which on 18 June 2021 had discharged and acquitted Nwaoboshi and his companies. The case centered on the illegal acquisition of a property known as Guinea House, Marine Road, Apapa, Lagos, for ₦805 million. Part of the purchase price—₦322 million—was transferred by Suiming Electrical Ltd on behalf of Nwaoboshi and Golden Touch Construction Project Ltd and is believed to have been derived from illicit activities. One count of the indictment reads: “That you, Peter Nwaoboshi and Golden Touch Construction Projects Limited, between May and June 2014, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, did acquire a property described as Guinea House, Marina Road, Apapa, Lagos, for the sum of ₦805 million, when you reasonably ought to have known that the sum of ₦322 million out of the purchase price transferred to the vendors by order of Suiming Electrical Ltd formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful activity of fraud and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15(2)(d) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15(3) of the same Act.”
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