A Story Nigerians Thought Was Settled—And Why It NoLonger Sits Easily – Onoriode Anselm
By, Onoriode Anselm
For a long time, I accepted the dominant Nigerian view of the Diezani Alison-Madueke story without much resistance. Former petroleum minister. London properties. Designer shopping.
A corruption case abroad. It looked like a familiar script, one we have seen too many times to doubt.
Where there is smoke, we tell ourselves, there must be fire.
But as proceedings have begun and details have entered the public domain, I find myself ina less comfortable place. Not convinced of anyone’s innocence. Not persuaded of anyone’sguilt. Just unsettled. Because the facts now in the open sit awkwardly with the certainty many of us once felt.
That discomfort is not emotional; it is evidentiary.
In most Nigerian corruption cases, ownership is not confusing. Houses are in the official’sname, or their spouse’s, or their children’s. Money passes through personal or family-linkedaccounts, sometimes clumsily hidden, sometimes not hidden at all. Nigerians have learned this pattern over decades of EFCC cases, white papers, and newspaper exposés. We know what these stories usually look like.
This one does not.
Again and again, the properties that dominate the headlines turn out not to be owned by Deziani Alison-Madueke. In court, a contractor responsible for major renovations at a London flat testified plainly that the property “had nothing to do with Mrs Madueke, but with Aluko,” and that she “never paid a penny” for the work. Invoices, payment chasers, and debts were sent elsewhere. When payments failed to come, it was those other parties — not her — who were pursued.
That should give any Nigerian pause. Not because it settles the case, but because it jars with how we have been reading it.
Across jurisdictions, asset freezes and forfeiture actions tell a similar story. Properties and accounts have been treated, legally and practically, as belonging to the businessmen whose names are on the companies and whose money funded the spending. After more than a decade of international scrutiny, there is still no trail of properties or bank accounts in her own name, or in the names of her immediate family, in the way Nigerians have come to expect.
Then there is the asymmetry that is hardest to ignore. The men whose accounts paid for the properties, the renovations, the travel — the alleged givers of the money — are not in the dock in London today. The spectacle is of a single former minister standing trial abroad, while the people whose companies signed the contracts and whose cards were charged remain structurally absent from accountability.
None of this proves anything by itself. But it does disturb the neatness of the story we thought we knew.
It also helps to place this discomfort in a frame Nigerians already understand. We have seen this dynamic before. When the banking sector was reshaped under Chukwuma Soludo, stronger banks emerged, weaker ones disappeared, and some very powerful interests lost ground. No one pretends that process was painless — but everyone accepts that the industry changed shape.
The oil sector did not remain frozen during the years Alison-Madueke held office. Look around today. Many of the Nigerian-owned oil companies that are major players now did not look like this before that period. That is not praise or blame; it is simply a matter of timing.
Industries do not change shape without consequences. When some people gain a seat at the table, others inevitably lose the one they once took for granted.
In an industry as global, valuable, and contested as oil, those who lose ground rarely disappear quietly. They resist. They push back. They shape narratives. Which makes the continued absence of certain powerful actors from accountability — while attention concentrates on one highly visible figure — all the more striking.
None of this asks Nigerians to suspend judgment. Courts exist to decide legal outcomes, and they should be allowed to do their work. But societies do something different. We interpret character. We decide which stories feel complete, and which ones no longer sit comfortably once all the pieces are on the table.
At the moment, the pieces in this case are creating friction. Much of what many of us “knew” was inference hardened into certainty. What is emerging now is messier, less emotionally satisfying, and far less linear than the morality play we settled on years ago.
I do not know how this case will end. But I am increasingly sure it is not as simple as many of us once believed. And in a country that has often paid a price for mistaking certainty for truth, that unease may be worth holding onto.
Onoriode Anselm is a Public affairs analyst and writes from warri