A Nigerian senator, Peter Nwaoboshi, has been sentenced to seven years in prison by the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal.
The senator, who represents Delta North senatorial district, was convicted on a two-count charge of fraud and money laundering.
The court also ordered that his two companies, Golden Touch Construction Project Limited and Suiming Electrical Limited, be wound up in line with Section 22 of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2021.
The spokesperson of Nigeria’s antigraft agency, EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, made this known in a statement on Friday.
The statement was also posted on the agency’s official Twitter handle.
Mr 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.”
Charges and Nwaoboshi’s defection
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.
While the trial was ongoing, Mr Nwaoboshi defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
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