Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria's former minister of petroleum resources, says her acquittal on bribery charges in the United Kingdom has brought to an end years of what she describes as unjust vilification.
She was cleared of all six charges by the Southwark Crown Court in London on Wednesday, after hours of jury deliberation.
The case against her dated back to October 2015, when she was first arrested in London, just months after leaving office, and was later released on bail.
She was formally charged by the UK government in August 2023 over an alleged £100,000 bribe, with her trial beginning this past January.
Prosecutors had accused her of accepting bribes in the form of luxury goods and access to high-end properties from industry figures, in exchange for awarding multi-million-pound oil and gas contracts during her time in office.
Her defence argued that she had limited control over contract approvals, since most decisions were made before they reached her desk.
Reacting to the verdict in a video, Alison-Madueke thanked God and the people who stood by her, describing the experience as traumatic for her family as well as herself, including her 93-year-old mother in Port Harcourt and her son.
In a separate statement issued through her representative, Bolouere Opukiri, she said a decade of unrelenting and unjust vilification had finally concluded, and that her name had been cleared.
She said she would speak about the events of the past decade and her plans in due course, but for now intends to focus on what she described as the freedom she had been denied for years.
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