Supreme Court Sentences Nigerian Senator To 7 Year Imprisonment For Collecting 12 Luxury Cars As Bribes

Nigeria’s apex court has delivered a crushing and final blow to former Akwa Ibom North-East Senator Albert Bassey Akpan, unanimously upholding his seven-year prison sentence for money laundering and restoring a restitution order requiring him to return over N204 million to the Federal Government.

In a landmark ruling delivered on Friday, a five-man panel of Supreme Court justices led by Justice Stephen Adah dismissed Akpan’s final appeal in its entirety, affirming the conviction and sentence originally handed down by Justice Agatha Okeke of the Federal High Court in Oyo on June 23, 2023. The panel declared it found no grounds whatsoever to disturb the earlier verdicts.

The case against the former lawmaker, who represented Akwa Ibom North-East in the Senate between 2015 and 2023, centred on events that preceded his legislative career. Prosecutors established that Akpan, while serving as Akwa Ibom State’s Commissioner for Finance, received twelve exotic vehicles — collectively valued at over N254 million — as gratification from companies awarded a N3 billion contract by the state government.

The court found that in accepting the luxury cars, Akpan had violated Section 15(2)(d) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011, an offence carrying a custodial sentence under the same legislation.

Having failed at the Federal High Court and again at the Court of Appeal — which dismissed his first appeal but controversially declined to uphold the trial court’s restitution order — Akpan brought his case before the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to escape both imprisonment and financial liability. Friday’s ruling ended that bid decisively.

In a move that went beyond merely affirming his sentence, the Supreme Court took the additional step of reinstating the restitution order that the Court of Appeal had set aside — ordering Akpan to refund N204 million to the Federal Government through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

“The order of this court is that the conviction and sentence imposed by the lower court on the 23rd day of June 2023 on the appellant is hereby affirmed,” the panel declared. It added that the appellate court’s decision to sidestep the restitution order “did not follow the law” and was accordingly set aside.

The ruling is being widely viewed as a significant victory for anti-corruption efforts in Nigeria, closing the door permanently on one of the more high-profile bribery cases to have worked its way through the country’s judicial system in recent years.