OPL 245: Documents admitted by Italian court against me not authentic, Adoke alleges

Former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice of Nigeria, Mr Mohammed Adoke (SAN), has alleged that an e-mail admitted by an Italian Court against him is not authentic.

In a statement he issued through his lawyer, Mr Femi Oboro of Gromyco Amedu solicitors, London, the ex-minister stated that the campaign against him that the document is the “proof” that he had a close relationship with Alhaji Aliyu Abubakar, who is on trial in Milan along with Shell and ENI in the Milan Court, was preposterous.

In the release tagged: “Re: Italian Court Accepts Email Evidence against Adoke”, the senior lawyer noted that he could not have sent an email through another person’s account, adding that he was no longer a minister at the time the purported email was allegedly sent.

He said that the email purportedly sent by him from the email address of Agroup Properties, said to belong to Abubakar, in respect of the OPL 245 transaction of 2011, was a figment of the imagination of his detractors.

Part of the statement signed by Adokes’s lawyer read: “Our client states categorically that the e-mail (copy enclosed) is a total forgery. First of all, the email is dated 21, June 2011. At the time in question, Mr Mohammed Bello Adoke SAN was no longer the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.

“The cabinet had been dissolved by President Goodluck Jonathan and was yet to be reconstituted. The despicable forgers did not do their due diligence before going to town. That is their stock in trade, in any case.”

He said curiously, in a screenshot of the email being circulated, the sender signed off simply as “Mohammed Bello Adoke”, stressing that for the record, all his correspondences, whether physical or electronic, are signed off with the suffix “SAN”.

“At no time did our client sign off any document without using his rank in the legal profession. Furthermore, our client would want to point out that he could never have sent an email from another person’s account and signed off with his name.

“This is completely illogical. Our client has an e-mail account for his personal and for his official matters. Therefore, it is completely nonsensical to expect our client to use another person’s email address.

“Moreover, our client while in office, had at least five aides working with him, and could have sent an email on his behalf assuming that Mr Mohammed Bello Adoke (SAN)was busy, or had issues with his email account,” the release noted.

He maintained that the poor work of forgery exhibited in the email admitted by the court, was not the first, saying that in 2017, they came up with a fictitious “recorded” phone conversation which Adoke was alleged to have had with one Ms Carlamaria Rumor, said to be of RAI Television in Italy.

“In it, our client was alleged to have told the reporter that he knew the OPL 245 transaction was a presidential scam.

“Those who want to keep collecting huge grants from international donors under the pretext of fighting corruption should continue to do so but they should leave our client’s name out of it,” the statement advised.

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