Court Admits Former WRPC MD To N500m Bail, Fixes October Trial
A former helmsman of one of Nigeria’s most troubled state owned refineries walked into a courtroom in Abuja on Monday to answer for how hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly moved through his hands outside the banking system, in a case that once again places the country’s refining sector at the centre of an anti corruption inquiry.
The Federal High Court in Abuja admitted Jimoh Olasunkanmi Yisawu, former Managing Director of the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company Limited, to bail in the sum of N500 million after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arraigned him on an eight count charge bordering on alleged money laundering. Yisawu, the sole defendant in the charge marked FHC/ABJ/CR/361/2026, pleaded not guilty to every count read before Justice Inyang Ekwo.
The charge, dated and filed on June 22, 2026, was brought by the Federal Government through the anti graft agency. Leading the prosecution, Ekele Iheanacho, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, told the court that the defendant allegedly breached provisions of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, through a chain of cash and foreign currency transactions the commission says were proceeds of unlawful activity.
According to the first count, Yisawu “indirectly converted the aggregate sum of over $789,950… being proceeds of unlawful activity,” an act the government said runs contrary to Section 18(2)(b) and is punishable under Section 18(3) of the Act. The commission alleged that the conversion occurred between October 2023 and May 2025 through one Samaila Bala, and that the funds did not form part of Yisawu’s lawful earnings as a public officer with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.
The second count accused him of making cash payments exceeding $789,950 to Bala without routing the money through a financial institution. In the fourth count, the prosecution alleged that he moved a further $122,600 through one Rasheed Olaitan Yusuf of Rasheedat Anike Global Ventures, between February 2024 and March 2025, outside the banking system and due process. Taken together, the transactions cited by the commission amount to roughly N1.339 billion.
The bail contest was sharp. After Yisawu entered his plea, Iheanacho applied for a trial date and told the court that the prosecution had filed a counter affidavit opposing bail, urging the judge to refuse the application. Defence counsel Wale Balogun, also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, countered that the commission had earlier granted his client administrative bail, a concession that publicly available accounts put at March 25, 2025, and had already seized his international passport. He asked the court to sustain the existing terms.
Ruling on the applications, Justice Ekwo held that the defendant was entitled to bail because the offences are bailable. “Going by Section 162 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015… I therefore grant bail in the sum of N500m with one surety in like sum,” the judge said. He directed that the surety must be a responsible Nigerian with landed property in Abuja and must file proof of ownership with the court registrar. Yisawu was further ordered to deposit his international passport with the court and barred from leaving Nigeria without the court’s permission. The judge ordered that he remain in the custody of the prosecution until the bail conditions are perfected, and adjourned the matter to October 25, 26 and 27, 2026 for trial.
The case lands against a backdrop of unusual public interest in the facility Yisawu once ran. The Warri refinery, a 125,000 barrels per day complex in Delta State, was rehabilitated at a cost of about $897.6 million, part of a wider programme awarded to the Italian contractor Saipem for the Warri and Kaduna plants at a combined $1.484 billion, with the work planned across three phases spread over 77 months. That figure sat within an even larger refinery spend that saw the Buhari administration commit well over $2 billion to reviving the country’s state owned refineries.
The refinery was declared operational with considerable fanfare in December 2024, when the then NNPCL leadership under Mele Kyari and President Bola Tinubu announced that it had resumed at 60 percent of nameplate capacity. The celebration proved short lived. An internal status report from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, widely reported in 2025, confirmed that the plant was shut down on January 25, 2025 over safety concerns on its Crude Distillation Unit Main Heater, and it has remained largely inactive since. By early 2026, NNPCL’s own management acknowledged that the refineries were running at significant losses.
The fallout reshaped the top of the corporation. In April 2025, NNPCL removed the managing directors of the Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries amid national outrage over the failed rehabilitation, alongside other senior exits. Under a new Group Chief Executive Officer, Bashir Bayo Ojulari, the company has since pivoted toward foreign partnership, signing a Memorandum of Understanding on April 30, 2026 in Jiaxing City, China, with two Chinese firms, Sanjiang Chemicals and New Future Group, for the rehabilitation and long term operation of the Warri and Port Harcourt refineries. About 35 Chinese engineers have since begun a technical assessment to inform a final investment decision, even as the corporation dismissed reports that refinery equipment was being stripped and sold as scrap.
It is important to note that the EFCC has not publicly tied the specific sums in the charge sheet to the refinery rehabilitation funds, and the allegations against Yisawu remain untested claims that he has formally denied. The transactions the commission cited fall within his period of public service, but the burden now rests on the prosecution to prove, at trial, that the money represented proceeds of unlawful activity rather than legitimate dealings.
The prosecution also fits a broader pattern of anti corruption cases moving through the same court. In recent months, the Federal High Court in Abuja has admitted several high profile defendants to substantial bail on money laundering charges, including a N2 billion bail granted to the president of a prominent socio cultural group in a separate $2.63 million matter, reflecting the commission’s continued focus on large value financial crime cases.
For now, the questions raised by the Warri refinery, a facility that has consumed close to a billion dollars, delivered fuel for a matter of weeks, and cost several executives their jobs, move into a courtroom, where the answers will be measured not by public sentiment but by the standard of proof the law demands.