Atlantic Post

The Paris Club refund controversy has erupted again, this time over whether the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission truly “cleared” Senator Ned Nwoko and whether any fresh or duplicate payment was ever approved. A source quoted by SaharaReporters insisted that the EFCC “did not clear Senator Ned Nwoko” and that the commission merely acknowledged that he had been paid for work carried out, not that a second payment was authorised. Nwoko, however, has rejected the allegation of a fresh claim, calling the reports “false” and “misleading”. 

This is not a new fight. The Paris Club refund saga has dragged on for years, with TheCable reporting in September 2021 that President Muhammadu Buhari halted a planned $418 million payment to consultants until all cases were exhausted. By August 2022, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting quoted Nwoko as saying the Nigeria Governors’ Forum allegedly took $100 million for state elections, while he claimed the actual consultancy balance was $68 million, not $418 million. 

What has reignited public anger is the clash of figures now circulating in the latest reports. Current coverage says EFCC Chairman Ola Olukoyede confirmed that $350 million had been paid out of the $637.6 million awarded to Linas International Limited, while a letter attributed to Attorney-General of the Federation Lateef Fagbemi sought approval for a further $396.6 million. The same reporting says Fagbemi also referred to a part payment of $241 million in 2018, while another account places the figure at $244 million. That gap alone leaves the matter looking badly muddled. 

Nwoko’s media team is pushing back hard. In statements carried by The Guardian, Punch, Vanguard and Tribune, the senator said there had been no “fresh claim”, denied that $350 million was ever paid to him or his company, and insisted that four EFCC reviews had already concluded that the contractual work was duly executed. His team also said the records of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria support the payment trail and the audit documentation. 

But the counter-narrative is equally serious. The SaharaReporters source argued that the anti-graft agency’s report does not authorise any duplicate payment and warned that portraying it as an approval for a second payout could drag the EFCC into deeper trouble. That matters because the current controversy is not simply about whether services were rendered. It is about whether a matter once treated as settled is now being reopened through fresh claims, new letters and conflicting bureaucratic interpretations. 

The historical trail is what makes the story so combustible. In 2018, former Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun recommended that the payment be treated as “full and final settlement” of claims tied to the Paris Club loans, with no further correspondence to be entertained. Buhari later approved the payment, and earlier reporting said it was sourced from the Excess Crude Account. Yet the 2024 request, as reported, framed the earlier disbursement as only a part payment and sought the balance as an outstanding judgment debt. Those two positions sit in direct tension with one another. 

The payment architecture itself remains controversial. Reporting cited in the current coverage says the EFCC flagged the $100 million allocated to the Nigeria Governors’ Forum as having been credited into two bank accounts linked to consulting firms that never executed any job related to the matter. The same reporting says $9 million was credited to the Federal Ministry of Justice by former AGF Abubakar Malami. Even without the broader political noise, those figures raise obvious questions about who authorised what, who benefited, and why the records do not reconcile neatly. 

The central problem is that the public record now contains multiple versions of the same financial history. One strand says Linas International Limited was paid $224 million after Malami’s redirection of funds. Another says $241 million was paid in 2018. A third says $244 million was paid. Those contradictions are not cosmetic. They go to the heart of whether there is any lawful balance left to chase, and whether any institution should be entertaining a new payment request at all. 

Politically, the case is already beyond a simple consultant’s fee dispute. It has become a test of state credibility, institutional memory and documentary discipline. If the 2018 payment was truly “full and final”, there should be no fresh balance. If there is a fresh balance, then government correspondence, approvals and legal undertakings from 2018 need to be explained with precision. Until that is done, the Paris Club file will continue to look like a moving target wrapped in official ambiguity.