The court headed by Justice John Tsoho had on Monday adjourned the case to Friday after Malabu Oil and Gas filed an application to join the matter.
In January, Justice John Tsoho of the Federal High Court, granted the order following an ex-parte motion filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) giving the EFCC powers to seize OPL 245 oil block and allowing the government powers to takeover operations of the oil block pending determination of court proceedings
Oil companies Shell and Eni had filed motions to dispute claiming EFCC conducted a gross abuse of process and an abuse of power to get a court order asking for the forfeiture
The same courts and same Judge, Justice John Tsoho reversed his earlier decision explaining that “The chairman of the EFCC failed to meet the precondition for making an application for interim attachment of properties. So the application as such was irregular and the order granted on its basis ought to be discharged.”
The agency had asked the court to temporarily return OPL 245 to the government while it continued its investigation of alleged corruption in the sale of the block.
But on Friday, the court reversed the order, and it also refused the application of Malabu Oil and Gas to join the matter.
In 1998, Dan Etete, who was then the minister of petroleum, had awarded the lucrative licence to Malabu, where he had stakes.
The sale to Malabu was nullified by Obasanjo in 1999 and assigned to Shell — without a public bid.
Ownership was suspiciously reverted to Malabu thereafter, leading to legal action by Shell who later resorted to negotiating directly with Etete after President Goodluck Jonathan assumed office in 2010.
A year later, the $1.3 billion deal was struck, with Malabu getting $1.1 billion from Shell and Eni to its transfer ownership, while the signature bonus was paid to Nigeria.
In the deal finally consummated in 2011, only $210 million of the $1.3 billion paid by Shell and Eni for the block went into federal government coffers as “signature bonus”.
