A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered that a Nigerian, Temitope Seyi Omotade, be surrendered to the United States to stand trial over an alleged wire fraud and identity theft scheme, in a ruling that places Nigeria’s extradition treaty with Washington back in the spotlight.
Delivering judgment, Justice Peter Lifu held that the application brought by the Attorney-General of the Federation was meritorious and that the conditions for surrender under the Extradition Act had been met. Omotade is wanted at the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, where he is named in a superseding five-count indictment filed in February 2022.
Court records show that the first three counts border on mail and wire fraud, each carrying a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. The remaining two counts, for aggravated identity theft and aiding and abetting, carry two years each, to run consecutively with any other sentence. The case in Nigeria was marked FHC/ABJ/CS/494/2024, with Omotade as the sole respondent.
In seeking the order, the Attorney-General argued that the request was backed by a full extradition packet and diplomatic notes from the United States, including a sealed indictment, an arrest warrant, sworn affidavits from American officials and Omotade’s passport details. The government maintained that the offences were non-political and non-trivial, that no criminal case was pending against him in Nigeria for the same conduct, and that assurances had been secured on fair trial conditions abroad.
Omotade urged the court to dismiss the suit. He denied the allegations of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft, insisting that his dealings, including a link to one Roxanne Gilbert, involved no criminal conduct or illicit proceeds. His lawyers contended that the application rested on thin material, pointing to the absence of blockchain analysis, financial trails, chat histories or video calls, and argued that the documents amounted to little more than identification particulars such as a passport page and an airway bill.
He also raised his health, telling the court he was under specialist care for hepatic steatosis, commonly known as fatty liver, and elevated liver function. His counsel submitted that surrendering him would be unjust and oppressive given the physical strain of international transfer and detention.
Justice Lifu was not persuaded. He held that the evidence did not establish that extradition would expose Omotade to grave and unavoidable medical harm, or that proper treatment could not be obtained in the United States. The judge added that nothing before him suggested the request was aimed at punishing the respondent on account of his race, religion, nationality or political views, and he dismissed a separate bail application. Omotade, the court stressed, will keep the right to contest the allegations under American law, since extradition decides only surrender and not guilt.
The order rests on a legal framework that predates Nigeria’s independence. The extradition treaty between Nigeria and the United States was signed in 1931 and came into force in 1935, and it remains binding through the Extradition Act of 1966 and its later amendments. Under that framework, only the Attorney-General can begin the process, and a court must be satisfied that the twin tests of dual criminality and sufficient documentation are met before a person is handed over.
This is not an isolated case. In 2022, Fatade Idowu Olamilekan was extradited over a fraud scheme valued at about 3.5 million dollars, and in May this year Samuel Ugberease was surrendered over a romance scam that prosecutors linked to losses of some 1.5 million dollars. A Lagos division of the same court separately cleared the surrender of Samuel Abiodun on wire fraud and money laundering counts. Not every request succeeds, however, as the attempt to extradite the suspended police officer Abba Kyari in the Hushpuppi matter was struck out in 2022 as an abuse of process because he was already facing trial at home.
The cases sit against a backdrop of surging cyber-enabled crime. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center put global losses at 20.9 billion dollars in 2025, up 26 per cent on the previous year, with business email compromise alone accounting for 3.05 billion dollars and wire transfers serving as the main channel for that money. Nigeria featured among the 20 foreign countries with the most complaints to the centre, at 1,219, underlining how closely its name is tied to international conversations about online fraud.
For Omotade, the ruling clears the final judicial hurdle, though his actual surrender now rests on the formal decision of the Attorney-General. Whatever follows in Minnesota, his case is a reminder that the 1931 treaty, nearly a century old, is still doing steady work.