The Supreme Court of Nigeria has affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeal that forfeited N1,582,000,000 linked to one Steve Ogidan, the National Coordinating Consultant of Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) as well as several companies and individuals to the Federal Government.
The decision of the five- man panelist of the apex court led by Justice Habeeb Adewale Abiru was delivered on Friday, June 19, 2026 following their review of the unanimous decision of the appellate court presided over by Justice Okon Abang on June 20, 2025, held that the ruling of the lower courts acted within the law.
The Supreme Court held that Ogidan’s suit was unmeritorious and accordingly dismissed the same, ordering him to pay the EFCC the sum of N5 million as cost of action.
Justice Abiru also noted that Ogidan and his cohorts before now have voluntarily returned the said funds as part of an out-of-court settlement which further validates the trial court`s decision to approve the final forfeiture.
Investigation by the Commission led to a reasonable suspicion that Ogidan acquired the said sum through illegitimate activities, specifically bribery from consultants he was supposed to monitor and supervise.
Resting on this, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) through its counsel, Ndeh Isotu approached the Federal High Court, Abuja presided by Justice I.E Ekwo for the forfeiture of the funds and on February 5, 2024.
The Commission secured an order of interim forfeiture of the funds. An order of final forfeiture also followed.
Dissatisfied with the final forfeiture order, Ogidan filed an appeal challenging the order and seeking a determination by the Appeal Court as to whether the trial court rightly applied Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud Act by causing the money to be forfeited to the federal government.
The appeal was heard on April 10, 2025 and lost.
The Commission’s investigations showed that cumulatively, between December 2015 and June 2021, eight of Steve Ogidan Consulting Companies; Successory Nigeria Limited, Beresh Consulting Limited, Blue Accord Nigeria Limited, Global Knowledge Consulting Limited, Freshvine Agribiz Limited, Richtigen Limited, O Stevens Consulting, Proteus and Enterprise Aesthetics were paid the total sum of ₦9,599,286,680.21 by NIRSAL.