By Adesina Soyooye
A former Nigerian Minister for Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, has been awarded the sum of N500 million by a Bayelsa High Court.
The whopping sum was awarded to her in damages for a documentary Is It Your Money? where she claimed she had been libelled.
The defendants in the case are Chude Jideonwe, Judith Audu, Eromo Egbejule, YNIIJA Limited and Capital Film Productions Limited.
Mrs Alison-Madueke had asked for the sum of N5 billion in damages for the libellous production.
She had asked the Court to order the defendants to retract the libellous documentary and to tender an unreserved public apology to be published in three national newspapers in Nigeria and another which is widely circulated in the United Kingdom, where she lives, as well as in the United States of America.
She, also, asked the Court to grant a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants or anybody associated with them in whatever capacity from running any part of the documentary.
Alison-Madueke was Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum, and the first woman to hold that office,(till date) during the Goodluck Jonathan Administration. Before she was appointed to a Cabinet position in Nigeria, she was an Executive Director in Shell Petroleum. She left Nigeria in 2015 when Jonathan lost his second term bid for the Presidency.
Since then, she has been living in the United Kingdom where she has been under the searchlight of Nigeria’s anti-graft Commission, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, for offences bordering on alleged corruption. She, strongly, denies all the allegations.
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