NIGERIA POINTS ITS FINGER AT DIEZANI ALISON- MADUEKE AS THE POSTER GIRL FOR BRIBE ACCEPTANCE

In a civil suit pending in the United Kingdom, attorneys for the Federal Republic of Nigeria have accused their country's former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, of conspiring with the former president, Goodluck Jonathan, of accepting illicit compensation (bribes) to arrange a billion dollar oil contract with Royal Dutch Shell and Eni, which was contrary to Nigerian law, and of their fiduciary duties. They allegedly received bribes, and made a secret profit, thus depriving the people of Nigeria of massive oil revenue. Diezani has a $153.3m forfeiture judgment entered against her, by a Nigerian government agency.

Alison-Madueke's covert purchase, of a Dominica diplomatic passport, from that nation's president, Roosevelt Skerrit, which was reportedly facilitated by its present Foreign Minister, Francine Baron, when she was the High Commissioner of Dominica to the UK, continues to stain Dominica's image in the international community. Madueke was a known financial criminal in Nigeria when she purchased the diplomatic passport, allegedly for cash paid to Skerrit in London, after he flew there on her personal demand. The scandal unmasked the sordid, backroom nature of corrupt Dominica politics and the greed of its officials, as there has never been an accounting of the cash paid for diplomatic passports, which went into the pockets of whoever sold the passports. Madueke later, unsuccessfully, sought to invoke Dominica diplomatic immunity, to evade a UK arrest for criminal activity.

PM Skerrit, Scotland, FM Baron

Diplomatic passports secretly sold to foreign nationals by senior officials in Dominica government, which do not include bona fide diplomatic postings, have been deemed illegal by most legal observers, and in violation of the United Nations treaty on Diplomatic Relations, known as the Vienna Agreement.