Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria's oil minister from 2010 to 2015 and the first woman to serve as president of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), was acquitted of all bribery charges on 17 June at Southwark Crown Court in London. The jury found her not guilty on five counts of accepting bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, delivering a significant blow to the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), which had spent 13 years investigating her case.

Prosecutors alleged that Alison-Madueke had enjoyed a lavish lifestyle — including chauffeur-driven cars, private jet travel, stays in luxury properties, and extensive renovation work at several London addresses — funded by wealthy oil industry executives who held or sought lucrative contracts with Nigeria's state-owned petroleum corporation while she was minister. Six men were named in the indictment, though none were charged. The prosecution, however, failed to demonstrate that she had awarded contracts in exchange for those benefits. Two co-defendants were also acquitted: her brother Doye Agama, 69, an archbishop at a Pentecostal church in Manchester, and businesswoman Olatimbo Ayinde, 54, a Nigerian-British oil executive who said she had been acting as an informant for Nigerian security services.

The defence argued that the case had been fatally compromised from the outset. Key documents that could have established Alison-Madueke's innocence, including financial records seized from her home in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, were never produced by Nigerian authorities. Her passport had been held by British police since her first arrest in October 2015, effectively preventing her from returning home or working abroad for nearly a decade. Defence barrister Jonathan Laidlaw KC described the near-11-year delay between arrest and verdict as a gross injustice and a sign of a