Justice ministry officials said to be selling seized properties and pocketing the proceeds

SEVERAL justice ministry officials and political aides to the attorney-general of the federation Abubakar Malami have been indicted for acquiring and selling off properties seized the federal government.

In a recent report, it emerged that a syndicate in the justice ministry has been selling off forfeited and recovered assets belonging to the federal government. This syndicate, comprising top justice ministry officials, including directors, a senior advocate of Nigeria and political aides to the attorney-general Abubakar Malami, has allegedly been disposing off some properties mostly in Abuja and Lagos, and pocketing the proceeds.

Apparently, former members of the defunct Ad Hoc Committee on the Sale of Non-essential Residential Houses in Abuja were also involved in the property racketeering going on in the ministry. This committee was disbanded in 2014 but its members were said to be deeply involved with senior officials of the ministry in illicit property deals.

A reliable source in the ministry confirmed that the members of the syndicate, who had access to title documents of forfeited and recovered properties, had been making millions of naira from selling government properties. He added:  “The former committee members give people offer letters, which they use in obtaining Certificates of Occupancy on government properties.

"When you trace it, you find that payments on the affected properties are not made to the government. The syndicate members are simply pocketing the proceeds from the sales of those properties."

“The impunity going on is mind-blowing, but the attorney-general unfortunately, is not aware of how his aides have been using his name and office to perpetrate all manners of illegal activities. Come to the ministry and see all manners of characters sealing eye-popping deals on government properties. It is shocking.”

In practice, the modus operandi of the group involved doctoring the dates on property titles by backdating them to the year 2013 and thereabouts, before selling off the properties at below market prices. For instance, a recent deal carried out by the officials and their accomplices involved some buildings estimated at over N2bn, which were allegedly sold for less than N1bn.

Proceeds from the sales are allegedly shared by the syndicate members, which include a female deputy director known to be close to the attorney-general.  Findings also indicated that the Inter-ministerial Committee on Disposal of Forfeited Assets, which claimed to have marked for auction 1,620 forfeited properties in 25 locations across the country, might have under-reported the number of recovered properties in Abuja.

Apparently, the committee had reportedly claimed that less than 100 properties forfeited in Abuja would be auctioned alongside others but an official put the number of confiscated properties in the nation’s capital at over 500. Only in October, the chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, disclosed that the anti-graft agency recently recovered over 300 houses from two civil servants in Abuja.