The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court in Abuja has dismissed a libel suit filed Olanrewaju Suraju, chairman of the HEDA Resource Centre, against former Attorney-General of the Federation Mohammed Bello Adoke.
Mr Suraju had instituted the libel suit, accusing Mr Adoke of defaming him in a petition he sent to the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) in 2021.
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The petition published by media outlets at the time requested the police to investigate an alleged forgery of an email and stage-managing of a phone conversation aimed to be tendered in the OPL 245 criminal trial in Italy and civil proceedings in the United Kingdom.
Mr Adoke said in his petition that the exhibits were meant to implicate him in the proceedings in Italy. At the time, Mr Adoke was undergoing prosecution in Nigeria over his alleged roles in the OPL 245 saga while his name featured in proceedings in different countries regarding the issue.
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Mr. Suraju demanded N100 million in damages as compensation for alleged defamation by Mr Adoke.
But delivering judgement on Wednesday, Judge Babangida Hassan dismissed the suit on the grounds that Mr Suraju failed to prove his case, TheCable reported.
According to the news platform, the judge held that Mr Adoke’s petition on which Mr Suraju anchored his libel case, did not contain his name and therefore could not have defamed him. Mr Suraju tendered a copy of the petition as Exhibit A1.
The court also ruled that a copy of the PREMIUM TIMES webpage presented to the court by Mr Suraju was unreliable as proof of publication by Mr Adoke because it did not bear an acknowledgement copy of the petition in question.
The court also ruled that sending a petition to the police could not in itself constitute defamation as it was the right of a citizen to do so.
It held that Mr Suraju’s evidence was successfully challenged and contradicted during trial, hence, it is “not worthy of acceptance”.
Mr Adoke opted not to enter a defence on the grounds that Mr Suraju’s case failed to meet the fundamental requirements of a libel suit.
The judge agreed with Mr Adoke in the judgement delivered on Wednesday, holding that there was nothing for the former attorney-general to defend.
The judge went on to dismiss the suit without awarding any costs.
Backstory
Mr. Suraju was charged at the Federal High Court in Abuja in 2022 after the police, acting on Mr Adoke’s petition, accused him of cyberstalking and circulating false information against Mr Adoke on social media and recommended to the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation (DPPF) to prosecute for cybercrime.
But in May 2025, the AGF office withdrew the charges, prompting the judge, Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court in Abuja, to strike them out.
Mr Suraju filed his libel suit against Mr Adoke before the charges stemming from police investigations were filed.
Web of cases
For years, Nigeria was part of civil and criminal cases in the UK, Italy, and the US in a bid to bring alleged fraudulent beneficiaries of the OPL 245 transactions to book and to recover proceeds of the controversial deal from them.
The email and audiotape complained of by Mr Adoke in his petition to police had featured in the criminal case in Milan, Italy over the transfer of about $1.1 billion by Shell and ENI through the Nigerian government to accounts controlled by a former Nigerian petroleum minister, Dan Etete.
The controversies surrounding OPL 245 started in 1998 when Dan Etete originally awarded the block to his Malabu Oil and Gas Limited while serving as petroleum minister in the late Sani Abacha’s regime.
Nigerian investigators and activists had alleged that Mr Etete bribed some top officials of the Goodluck Jonathan administration after Eni and Shell controversially acquired OPL 245, one of Nigeria’s richest oil blocks.
They claimed that Nigeria did not benefit from the $1.1 billion transferred for the acquisition of the rich oil field while the ownership crisis over the oilfield remained unresolved.
In 2011, Mr Adoke as the then-AGF, advised President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration on the OPL 245 transactions to resolve the ownership logjam that had prevented its exploration for years.
His name repeatedly featured in matters connected to the deal. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) prosecuted him at the Federal High Court in Abuja and the FCT High Court in Abuja.
However, both Nigerian courts dismissed the cases filed against him in 2024 on the grounds of a lack of any credible evidence of wrongdoing against Mr Adoke.
A Milan court would later acquit Eni and Shell regarding the charges connected with their roles in the OPL 245 matter.
Two Milan prosecutors were convicted by an Italian court for failing in their legal obligation to file documents that could have helped the defendants accused accused in the OPL 245 trial.
In October last year, an Italian appeals court upheld the conviction of the prosecutors – Fabio De Pasquale and Sergio Spadaro.
