Publisher and presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, has alleged that a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, sent someone to offer him a bribe in New York, United States of America during her time in office to shut down negative stories on his platform.
Sowore made this revelation while speaking in Part 2 of the four-part docu-series: “Is it Your Money?” directed by Chude Jideonwo.
Part 1 was released on May 2, 2025 and Part 2 was released on Sunday (today) exclusively on the premium streaming platform: withChude.com.
The Publisher of Sahara Reporters said: “I told the guy not to stay too long in New York, because it is a crime to offer bribes to anyone in the US for political reasons, so he left.
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“He told me he was from Diezani.
“He was more upset that I was not accepting (because) his own part of the bribe was going to suffer.”
Sowore’s allegation, which the filmmakers make clear to state has not been independently verified, comes among several other hard-hitting exposes in the documentary, including the never-before told details of the “Diezani series” from NEXT Newspaper in 2012.
Multiple reporters, including the Editor-in-Chief of Premium Times, Musikilu Mojeed; Managing Editor of the same paper, Idris Akinbajo; and former NEXT Reporter, Elor Nkereuwem, spoke candidly about uncovering bribery schemes, inappropriate financial relationships, and corruption under Alison-Madueke’s leadership of the ministry.
“We discovered a discreet scheme for bribery,” Mojeed said in the docu-series. “Mr. Rufai was the person designated to collect the bribe in dollars. He would then pass it on to the PPPRA source, who would then pass it on to the oil minister.”
“You could question some of the management decisions of NEXT Newspapers,” Akinbajo added. “But largely it was because the Jonathan government wanted to kill NEXT and they succeeded.”
The documentary is released on the 10th anniversary of her leaving Nigeria in 2015.
It traces Alison-Madukwe’s rise from a sheltered childhood in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, dealing with student debt in university and rising through the ranks of Shell until her appointment as the first female president of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
She has over the past 10 been subject of court judgements in the United States and Nigeria, with multiple forfeitures and repatriation of monies to Nigeria.
Trial for her United Kingdom case has been set for January 2026.
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