A request to transfer Richard Ugbah, a Nigerian who was found guilty of fraud in the US, to serve out the remainder of his prison sentence in Nigeria has been denied by the ECOWAS Court of Justice in Abuja.
News About Nigeria gathered that the court, in a judgment delivered on Thursday, stated that it lacked jurisdiction to grant Ugbah’s request.
A statement from the court’s communication unit detailing the major issues considered in Thursday’s ruling stated that Mr. Ugbah had informed the court that he had already spent eight of the twelve years of jail time imposed on him and that he was scheduled for release in May 2026.
The applicant, a US resident and citizen of Nigeria, entered a guilty plea to one count of wire fraud on February 14, 2017. He was found guilty by the District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin and was given a 12-year prison sentence.
According to a statement from the ECOWAS Court, on November 15, 2017, he submitted a guilty plea to an additional count of conspiring to commit fraud, and on November 22, 2017, the judgement was entered.
However, the court, led by Judge Rapporteur Sengu Koroma, upheld Nigeria’s preliminary objection, declaring the applicant’s claims “unfounded and without legal basis.”
The court ruled that Nigeria’s Ministry of Justice, the second respondent, was not a proper party in the case and subsequently dismissed all the prayers of the applicant.
Ugbah was convicted by the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.
The petitioner argued that the case should be heard based on international norms, but the court rejected this claim, stating that there was no legal basis for the competence issue.
Justices Dupe Atoki (presiding) and Ricardo Cláudio Monteiro Gonçalves were the other members of the panel.
