Court orders Maina’s son to serve seven-year jail term after six years of fleeing

Faisal Maina Son

The Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered the transfer of Faisal Maina, son of former chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, to a correctional centre to serve his seven-year prison sentence.

Judge James Omotosho gave the order on Thursday after granting an ex parte application by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to enforce the judgement convicting and sentencing him.

Mr Maina had evaded prison since he was convicted and sentenced until his recent arrest.

EFCC lawyer M.K. Hussain moved the application, prompting the judge to order that Mr Maina serve his sentences as previously imposed following his conviction. He is to serve three years’ imprisonment on count one, seven years on count two and three years on count three.

The sentences are to run concurrently from 14 October, when he was re-arrested. He is therefore expected to spend seven years in prison.

The conviction and sentencing took place in the absence of Mr Maina, who stopped attending proceedings and escaped from the reach of the law enforcement agencies at trial stage. The then-judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja, Okon Abang, who is now of the Court of Appeal, revoked his bail, issued a warrant for his arrest and ordered the trial to proceed in his absence.

The operatives reportedly arrested him on 14 October in the Karsana area of Abuja after receiving intelligence that he had secretly returned to Nigeria.

Mr Maina was arraigned before the Federal High Court in Abuja in 2019 on three charges of money laundering and failure to make full disclosure in an asset declaration form.

The EFCC alleged that he operated a fictitious account with United Bank for Africa (UBA), through which his father laundered N58.1 million.

The account, operated in the name of “Alhaji Faisal Farm 2”, received funds which Mr Maina and his father subsequently withdrew between October 2013 and June 2019.

He pleaded not guilty but later breached his bail conditions and stopped attending his trial in 2020. The Federal High Court subsequently tried him in absentia and convicted him in October 2021.

In his judgement, the trial judge, Mr Abang, ordered that Mr Maina be arrested wherever he was found in Nigeria and taken to a correctional centre to serve his sentence. He also directed the federal government to begin extradition proceedings if he was found outside the country.

Mr Maina later appealed the conviction as a fugitive. In its judgement of 24 November 2022, the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction but reduced his prison terms to seven.

The appellate court held that the trial court should not have imposed the maximum punishment on a first-time offender.

Abdulrasheed Maina, the convict’s father, was also convicted by the same judge in a separate money laundering case involving about N2 billion in pension funds.

The senior Mainaa was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in November 2021 after finding him guilty of laundering the funds through fictitious bank accounts and his company, Common Input Property and Investment Limited.

He was released from prison in February 2025 after qualifying for statutory remission for good conduct, according to the Nigerian Correctional Service.