Dr. Ikedi Godson Ohakim

Dr. Ikedi Godson Ohakim is a Nigerian politician and former Governor of Imo State (29 May 2007 - 29 May 2011), elected first on the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) ticket before publicly defecting back to the People's Democratic Party (PDP) on 25 July 2009. Born on 4 August 1957 in Okohia, Isiala Mbano LGA of Imo State, he holds a BSc in Business Administration and an MSc in Management from the University of Lagos, served as Imo State Commissioner for Commerce, Industry and Tourism in the early 1990s under Governor Evan Enwerem, and had a long private-sector career at First Aluminium, Tower Groups, Alucon and the Mekalog Group before entering elective politics. His four-year tenure as governor coincided with the Yar'Adua/Jonathan years. He lost his April 2011 re-election bid to Rochas Okorocha (APGA). On 7 July 2015 he was arrested by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and on 8 July 2015 he was arraigned before Justice Ademola Adeniyi of the Federal High Court Abuja on a three-count money-laundering charge. The charge centres on his alleged cash payment of USD 2,290,000 (about N270 million at the time) in November 2008 for the purchase of a property at Plot 1098 Cadastral Zone A04, otherwise known as No. 60 Kwame Nkrumah Street, Asokoro District, Abuja, allegedly using one Sule Abu (a businessman) as a proxy and his company Tweenex Consociates H.D Ltd as the nominal purchaser, in breach of section 1 of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2004. He is additionally alleged to have failed to declare the property as part of his asset declaration to the EFCC. He pleaded not guilty and was admitted to bail on 9 July 2015 in the sum of N270 million with one Abuja-resident surety. EFCC counsel Festus Keyamo (later a federal minister) led the prosecution and called multiple witnesses, including Sule Abu, who testified in December 2015 that the former governor had given him the cash and instructed him to buy the property in the name of his (Sule's) company. In January 2016 the EFCC alleged that Ohakim's son had attempted to intimidate the witness; the defence rejected this. Ohakim, testifying in his own defence between 2017 and 2022, denied ever meeting Sule, denied using any proxy, and disowned both the Asokoro property and the $2.29 million, while admitting ownership of a separate Maitama, Abuja property purchased through Fidelity Bank transfer. The EFCC eventually closed its case after the testimony of its sixth witness, after which defence senior counsel Chief Awa Kalu, SAN filed a no-case submission under section 308 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), arguing for discharge for want of evidence. The matter has been bedevilled by repeated adjournments, prosecutor absences and judicial-bench changes (Justice Adeniyi Ademola voluntarily retired from the Federal High Court in December 2017 amid his own separate corruption ordeal, in which he was discharged) and has effectively stalled without a substantive final verdict. The HEDA Resource Centre's Corruption Cases Compendium catalogues this matter as case #37. Ohakim has consistently maintained his innocence, has won several unrelated civil and personal-rights matters in subsequent years, and remains an active figure in PDP politics in the South-East. This entry treats the EFCC money-laundering matter as the flagship corruption case; other later proceedings against him (e.g., 2021-2022 cybercrime charges before Justice Taiwo Taiwo over alleged threats to release nude photographs of a businesswoman, struck out in February 2022 after the Attorney-General of the Federation withdrew the charge) are personal-scandal matters, not corruption proceedings, and are excluded from the cases array.