Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arrested Mustapha Abdullahi in Abuja on Wednesday over alleged money laundering offences involving more than N500 billion. He is being held by the anti-graft agency for further investigation.
The arrest puts Abdullahi, who was appointed in October 2023 by President Bola Tinubu as director-general and chief executive of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, at the center of a case that has drawn years of suspicion around the agency. He had spent more than 10 years at the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission before taking the ECN job.
The move follows a petition filed in December 2025 by the Network Against Corruption and Drug Trafficking to Tinubu, the EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission. The group accused the ECN chief of running what it called a well-coordinated and brazen scheme involving the illegal award and payment of solar streetlight contracts worth several hundreds of millions to five companies it said were owned and controlled by the same people.
NACAT said all five companies were registered within a single week in late October and early November 2023, shared similar addresses in Abuja and had the same directors. It also alleged that procurement laws were violated in the award of the contracts. The group described the alleged conduct as a betrayal of public trust.
The EFCC has not laid out its case publicly, and spokesperson Dele Oyewale was not available for comment at the time of this report. What is clear is that the commission has turned a petition into an arrest, and Abdullahi now faces scrutiny over both the money laundering allegations and the earlier claims surrounding contracts at the Energy Commission.
