Justice Mohammed Maina of the Borno State High Court in Maiduguri has handed Akeem Oriade Adeyinka separate prison terms totalling six years for swindling two businessmen out of N13 million through fake investment and supply deals. Adeyinka, arraigned on 23 September 2025 by the Maiduguri Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, promised Oseni Ibrahim Alani a phantom contract and Haruna Malim a lucrative Cameroon supply job, pocketing N3 million and N10 million respectively without delivering anything.
The court heard that in 2024 Adeyinka collected the sums claiming they were needed to finance a government contract and to import Automated Teller Machine parts, representations he knew to be false. After pleading not guilty, the defendant watched witnesses testify and documents tendered by prosecuting lawyers S.O. Saka and A. D. Abdulmalik before the judge found him guilty on both counts. For the first offence Adeyinka received three years with an option of N300,000 fine and was ordered to refund N3 million or face an extra seven years behind bars. The second count drew another three-year stretch with a N100,000 buy-out plus a N10 million restitution order, failing which he must serve ten additional years. The sentences will run one after the other.
In a separate session the same day, the EFCC arraigned Alhaji Abdullahi Hamman before Justice Maina for allegedly obtaining N2.6 million from John Haruna between May 2021 and January 2023 under the guise of selling two plots in Galaxy Estate. Hamman, granted bail, must produce two sureties: a family member and a property owner within metropolitan Maiduguri.
Adeyinka's consecutive sentences add up to a potential sixteen extra years if he cannot find N13 million, a penalty structure that turns the court into a debt collector while still warehousing him in overcrowded cells. Nigeria's courts are quietly shifting fraud punishment from simple incarceration to wealth extraction, a tactic that fills public coffers yet leaves victims hoping the convict still has hidden cash.
Globally, financial-crime sentencing increasingly blends restitution with punitive years, mirroring American forfeiture models and British confiscation regimes; the goal is to cripple illicit networks by clawing back proceeds. Maiduguri's judges now import that playbook, betting that long default terms will pressure kin to rally funds and expose laundered assets.
For Nigerians, the message is stark: if you lose money to a swindler, judicial recovery hinges on the fraudster's solvency, not state compensation. Across Africa, where asset-tracing units remain underfunded, courts may copy Borno's formula—longer back-end sentences—as a second-best deterrent when tracing fails.
Watch whether Adeyinka pays up; a sudden refund would reveal either concealed reserves or fresh backers, clues the EFCC can chase to map broader laundering channels.
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