Nigerian businesswoman, Aisha Achimugu, laments her ordeal with the EFCC so far, seeking fairness and respect for the rule of law in her case.
NIGERIAN BUSINESS LEADER AND INVESTOR SPEAKS OUT: “PROTECTION OF LIFE AND RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW”
I, Aisha Achimugu (OFR), an accountant and law-abiding citizen of Nigeria, was the wife and now a widow of the late Engr. Sulaiman Achimugu, a man whose life was a testament to the Nigerian dream. My husband was a paragon of integrity who rose to lead the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), retiring with a record so unblemished that it served as a beacon of transparency for the entire industry.
Throughout this impactful journey, I was beside him as his wife. Being his wife added to the values I already had from the foundation I was born into. This foundation had consequences for any wrongdoing. I am a mother, a daughter, a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, and a proven business developer, with a progressive track record across all my businesses, a visible impact in the labour space, and a contribution to the national economy. I have spent decades building indigenous capacity and employing hundreds of my fellow citizens. Our family name has always been synonymous with service. Yet today, that legacy is being systematically dismantled by an unrelenting and unjust assault.
Today, I am compelled to address both the local and international press in connection with what can best be described as a sustained campaign of calumny that threatens not just my personal rights to life and property, but the lives of my young children, aged parents, extended family and staff, and also the enabling environment for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Nigeria.
For nearly two years now, I have been subjected to the worst kind of oppression, character assassination, intimidation and the deliberate dissipation of my lawfully acquired personal property through the malicious actions of agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), led by its current Chairman. Such actions, which I have carefully outlined below, constitute an affront to the principles of the rule of law and natural justice, as provided in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Many have misinterpreted my long silence as fear or guilt resulting from the misleading and malicious information targeted at me. I state categorically that I refrained from speaking out purely out of personal restraint and national interest. I have always appreciated the enabling environment Nigeria provided for me to thrive over the last three decades.
An example of this commitment was the immense collaboration I experienced during an international roadshow spanning over 30 countries to promote the then Ibaka Deep Sea Port project, which led to the visible birth of Ibom Deep Sea Port, a massive infrastructure initiative I proposed to the Federal Government to drive national growth. With a mere letter of expression of interest to the Ministry of Transport in port development, without knowing who I was or a test of my capacity, I was trusted in my representation of professionalism.
Nonetheless, sometime in 2023, the Port Harcourt zonal office of the EFCC wrongly froze all my personal bank accounts, those of my children, my companies within the Felak Group, and the group account itself, having misled the Federal High Court (FHC) into granting an order of interim forfeiture, on the mistaken premise that I was a partner, associate, director or shareholder of a company called MBA Forex and Capital Investment.
In January 2024, a separate invitation letter from the EFCC again raised the same MBA Forex matter. My legal counsel and I honoured the invitation and clarified the true, limited nature of my company’s dealings with MBA. We had simply carried out and been paid for a single transaction on the company’s behalf. The CBN had publicly declared MBA a Ponzi scheme. I held no ownership stake in MBA Forex. To close the matter, we refunded N58,000,000 relating to that transaction by bank draft to the EFCC recovery account, which I was told settled my company’s involvement in the investigation which arose from a petition by aggrieved people. My presentation to the EFCC on the matter cleared the mistaken impression that I, my children and my companies were part-owners of MBA or had any stake or involvement with them.
However, my ordeal with the EFCC escalated rapidly in March 2025. On 4 March 2025, I received a two-line WhatsApp message from an unknown number inviting me to the EFCC’s Port Harcourt office the following day, the 5th of March 2025. I called the unknown number to explain that I would be unavailable until the third week of April because I was abroad when I received the message.
My legal counsel followed up by hand-delivering an official letter to the Port Harcourt office on 5 March 2025, reiterating the position stated in my earlier phone call above, which was duly received and stamped. Despite this, I received a series of aggressive calls and further WhatsApp messages on 9 March 2025. To ensure full transparency, my lawyer wrote directly to the EFCC Chairman in Abuja on 12 March 2025, attaching the earlier correspondence and confirming my availability for 27 and 28 April 2025. This record of correspondence definitively refutes any suggestion that I absconded. Rather, I remained in constant, documented communication with the EFCC.
Yet on 10 March 2025, even as this cooperative exchange of letters was ongoing, what looked at first like an ordinary social media rumour was revealed to be a carefully planned, targeted and malicious campaign of blackmail, slander and defamation against my person, my children, my family and my businesses, flooding local and international platforms with my name and image under a false narrative. This malicious, deliberate action was orchestrated with no regard for my contributions to the national economy and my international representation as a Nigerian citizen.
The malicious nature of the EFCC’s actions became undeniable on 28 March 2025. On that day, my company, Oceangate Oil & Gas Limited, the winning bidder for PPL 302-DO and PPL 3007, submitted proof of payment to the NUPRC totalling $20,000,000 ($10,000,000 per block). Remarkably, just four hours after these payments were confirmed, the EFCC declared me a “Wanted Person” for “conspiracy and money laundering,” and promoted that aggressively amongst all social platforms across the globe, despite my whereabouts being well-documented and known to them.
Immediately following this declaration, at about 5pm, over 30 armed operatives invaded my home, terrorised my family, embarrassed my environment and carted away all my jewellery, safes, and personal funds in a cruel and unprofessional manner for reasons best known to them. And with no reason for my offence. It seemed like a clear show of power.
In April 2025, while seeking the protection the courts could offer, I filed a fundamental rights suit at the Federal High Court in Abuja. The matter was heard even in my absence and was adjourned to 29 April 2025, with the court ordering that the status quo be maintained until that date. The adjourned date of 29 April 2025 fell within the same window my lawyers had already communicated to the EFCC that I would be returning to Nigeria. It cleared the way for my return to the country on 28 April 2025.
Yet upon my arrival in the early hours of that day, EFCC operatives were waiting for me at the airport, and, notwithstanding the court’s standing order, took me to their headquarters. I did not resist. I was placed in an interrogation room and, at 5pm, presented with an asset declaration form, which I half-filled because I did not understand the context, and to avoid any false information, even though I told them it did not apply to me as a private-sector individual. Still, they insisted that that was the instruction given.
At 5:30pm, I was given a bail form with conditions requiring two Level 16 civil servants and two identified properties with original Certificates of Occupancy, then detained overnight and taken to court the next day in an EFCC vehicle. The judge granted me bail and ordered my release within 24 hours.
Yet, this release was inexplicably delayed by five days, needlessly prolonging my detention upon meeting my bail condition. They also disobeyed the bail conditions by instructing me to submit my International passport. As a law-abiding citizen, I did not resist that directive.
Upon finally returning home, I was confronted by the trauma my ordeal had caused my family. My mother, who had only returned 24 hours earlier from a spine surgery abroad and was still in the recovery stage, was ordered to sit for hours and was emotionally humiliated by the EFCC operatives with no consideration for her age or health. The shock of that experience has left her health permanently compromised to this day. In response, I filed a further fundamental human rights action against the EFCC for breach of my rights to privacy and property.
Rather than answer for that conduct, the EFCC responded by widening its pressure on my finances. It froze every bank account linked to me and my businesses, and for nearly two years, my personal and corporate accounts have remained frozen amid ongoing litigation across multiple courts. When that failed to achieve its aim quickly enough, the EFCC turned to Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud Act, embarking on the tracing, seizure and forfeiture of assets connected to me, without any criminal complaint, petition, or legal foundation whatsoever.
As part of the same push, a further media campaign attempted to link me to US$7,000,000 allegedly abandoned in a bank, a claim contradicted by the same clear payment tellers already submitted to NUPRC, showing $2,000,000 paid through a South African Bank in South Africa directly to NUPRC’s designated account on PPL 3007 and $5,000,000 on PPL 302 as part of Oceangate’s proof of payment Yet the EFCC nonetheless continued to press the allegation in court filings and in the social media space in the continuous campaign to smear my character.
Having failed to sustain that particular allegation, the EFCC turned its attention to the remainder of the same NUPRC payment that my company submitted. Thirteen Million Dollars ($13,000,000) out of the total Twenty Million Dollars ($20,000,000) combined payment for both PPL 302-DO and PPL 3007 by Oceangate Oil & Gas Limited into NUPRC’s federal government account. The EFCC acknowledged those transactions in the motion it filed as part of an ex parte forfeiture order before the Federal High Court, without any established case or existing petition. That order has been challenged on appeal, and I await the outcome.
On 20 January 2026, while both that appeal and my earlier suit over the first home invasion were still pending, EFCC operatives invaded my private home a second time. They removed all vehicles on the premises by crane and flatbed, without regard to ownership, damage, or safety, abandoning them recklessly to the weather, with no record of offence committed. When I sought the court’s intervention for the return of all my vehicles after six months, and other seized personal items for almost two years, the EFCC, rather than defend that suit at the Federal High Court, instead obtained a further ex parte order of forfeiture from the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.
In nearly two years, I have lost over nine international bank accounts, some with 35 years of operating history, and some less than that, without any history of suspicion on my financial activities, including my children’s international upkeep allowance account. Several financing opportunities have been cancelled as a direct consequence of the continuous, calculated smearing of my name.
This has kept me in constant fear for the safety and emotional well-being of my young children. My parents have visibly aged beyond their years because of the trauma caused by the relentless and unjustified attacks against their daughter, without a crime being identified or an offence being committed. Beyond the deliberate and sponsored media campaign that has sought to misrepresent my identity, I struggle with fears for the safety and mental states of my young children. My parents have aged three times ahead because of the trauma of the no-reason smear of their child, apart from the misleading representation by the deliberately sponsored and damaging media trial of my person.
I have lost valued friendships because many fear being associated with someone falsely branded with allegations of money laundering and financial conspiracy. My reputation has been unfairly questioned, while my investments and businesses have suffered severe setbacks solely due to the dissemination of misleading information to the Nigerian public and the international community.
This is despite the fact that, in the last five years alone, I have invested almost $90,000,000 in Nigeria’s Oil & Gas sector, funds I committed because I believe in Nigeria and in the promise of its Local Content Act and Petroleum Industry Act, both designed to support indigenous operators like myself.
I have attracted over $100,000,000 in investment into the Nigerian economy because I believed in and trusted my country. I have directly employed close to 200 Nigerians. I invested in several charity projects through my foundation (Sam Empowerment Foundation, SEF) that have successfully implemented and impacted over 1,000 health programmes, including oxygen supply programmes across several health centres. SEF has also empowered more than one million people through its various interventions, paying medical bills, building primary health centres, schools, modern sanitary facilities for schools, implementing water projects for communities in various states in Nigeria, constructing mosques and churches, providing scholarships for over two thousand Nigerians, operating food bank for low income families, conducting over 3,000 successful community outreach initiatives, and providing educational support to more than 10,000 children.
I made these investments in my country without ever imagining that it would become the basis upon which I would be defamed, my companies discredited, and my children made to live with diminished confidence and constant fear for the safety of their mother.
