Forfeiture Order: Presidential panel seals senator’s properties across Nigeria

The presidential panel in charge of recovering stolen public properties on Saturday took temporary possession of several properties allegedly owned by Peter Nwaoboshi, the senator representing Delta North District.

Okoi Obono-Obla, the head of the presidential panel, coordinated the inscriptions of government’s takeover of houses, filling stations, row of residential buildings and other properties traced to Mr Nwaoboshi on Saturday afternoon.

He said the properties were located in Warri, Asaba, Asaba, Lagos and Abuja.

The move came a week after a federal court in Abuja placed an interim forfeiture on 14 properties and 22 bank accounts said to have been traced to Mr Nwaoboshi, a long-time Delta politician who was first elected to the Senate in 2015.

Mr Obono-Obla also recently accused Mr Nwaoboshi of falling to declare several properties and bank accounts he owned in his asset declaration filings against the code of conduct regulations.

The panel also wrote to several banks including Zenith Bank, UBA, Sterling Bank and Access Bank to deny Mr Nwaoboshi further access to all 22 accounts traced to him across their institutions.

In the July 5 interim forfeiture order, Taiwo Taiwo of the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court gave Mr Nwaoboshi or anyone who might have owned the seized assets 30 days to convince the court why they should not be permanently forfeited to the Nigerian government.

Some of the properties sealed by Mr Obono-Obla on Saturday include Summing Electrical Company, Airport Road, Asaba, PON Filling Station, Airport Road, Asaba and a large estate of duplexes along Maryam Babangida Road, Asaba.

Others are Cartage Cinema, Okpana Road, Asaba; Newbridge Filling Station, Osubi Airport Road, Warri; and a house at 8 Monu Olanrewaju Crescent, GRA, Asaba.

Mr Nwaoboshi’s alleged properties sealed in Lagos include Guinea House, 27, Marine Road, Apapa and a large building at 41, Burma Road, Apapa.

In Abuja, properties traced to Mr Nwaoboshi and seized include House 25, 6932 Road, Adban Estate, Gwarimpa and Plot 3011B, Kuranakh Close, Maitama.

A large parcel of land said to be owned by the senator was also seized in Abuja.

The presidential panel is not the only agency chasing Mr Nwaoboshi, even though its vast seizures of the senator’s suspected asset were largely seen as unprecedented since an investigation into his activities began.

The politician spent several months in EFCC custody last year and was later arraigned for fraud in a separate case that has been active.

Mr Nwaoboshi had long maintained no wrongdoing, saying federal authorities were only after him for political reasons.

He said in a message to PREMIUM TIMES last week that he had received an order from a federal court that his assets should not be seized by the Nigerian government or any of its affiliated agencies.

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