Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, representing Delta North Senatorial district has been sentenced to seven years in prison by the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal.
The Nigerian senator was convicted on a two-count charge of fraud and money laundering.
His two companies, Golden Touch Construction Project Limited and Suiming Electrical Limited, were also ordered by the Court to be wound up in line with Section 22 of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2021.
Wilson Uwujaren, the spokesperson of Nigeria’s antigraft agency, EFCC, disclosed this in a statement on Friday.
The statement was also posted on the agency’s official Twitter handle.
Senator Nwaoboshi has, in the past few years, been enmeshed in several allegations of fraud and misappropriation of funds.
In 2021, he was accused by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) of using 11 companies as fronts to secure for himself a N3.6 billion contract in the commission. The contract was not executed and the money was not refunded.
The past NDDC spokesperson, Charles Odili, had said the contract was the “biggest single case of looting of the Commission’s resources.”
In 2018, the lawmaker and his two companies were arraigned before a Lagos Division of the Federal High Court over N322 million fraud and money laundering charges.
The EFCC in suit number FHC/L/117C/18 arraigned the three defendants for acquiring a property named Guinea House, Marine Road, in Apapa, Lagos, for N805 million. The agency said that N322 million of the money was part of the proceeds of fraud.
In the middle of this trial, Nwaoboshi defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Barely 24 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed him to the APC, the senator and his companies were discharged and acquitted by Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke and the charges were dismissed – in June 2018.
The judge ruled that the EFCC failed to prove the elements of the offences for which it charged the lawmaker.
In a fresh ruling and conviction, the EFCC appealed the high court’s ruling and was successful at the appellate court, leading to the sentencing of the lawmaker.
According to Uwujuren, the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge erred in dismissing the charges against the respondents.
“It said the prosecution had proved the ingredients of the offence and consequently found the defendants guilty as charged.”
The jailed senator Nwaoboshi is among the over 50 senators seeking another term in the parliament.
He became the flagbearer of the APC after winning the ruling party’s ticket to contest again in the next election come 2023.
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