Court sends Maina’s son to prison for seven years after years on the run

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

Judge James Omotosho made this ruling on Thursday after he accepted an ex parte request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to implement the sentence against him.

Faisal Maina had been avoiding prison since his conviction and sentencing until he was recently arrested.

EFCC lawyer M.K. Hussain presented the application, leading the judge to order that Faisal serve his sentences as initially given after his conviction. He will serve three years for count one, seven years for count two, and three years for count three.

These sentences will run concurrently starting from 14 October, when he was re-arrested. This means he is expected to spend a total of seven years in prison.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) arrested Faisal Maina in Abuja about six years after he was convicted and sentenced in October 2021.

His conviction and sentence happened without him being present. He had stopped showing up for court and managed to evade law enforcement during the trial. The previous judge, Okon Abang, who now serves at the Court of Appeal, revoked his bail, issued an arrest warrant, and allowed the trial to continue in his absence.

The operatives reportedly arrested him on 14 October in the Karsana area of Abuja after getting a tip-off that he had quietly returned to Nigeria.

He was later handed over to the EFCC, which confirmed his custody on 17 October. EFCC spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, stated that the agency would seek a court order to move him to a correctional center to carry out his sentence.

Why Faisal Maina was convicted

Faisal was brought before the Federal High Court in Abuja in 2019 on three charges related to money laundering and failing to fully disclose in an asset declaration.

The EFCC claimed that he managed a fake account with United Bank for Africa (UBA), where his father laundered N58.1 million.

The account, named “Alhaji Faisal Farm 2”, received money that Faisal and his father withdrew between October 2013 and June 2019.

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

In his ruling, the trial judge, Mr Abang, ordered that Faisal be arrested wherever he was found in Nigeria and taken to a correctional center to serve his sentence. He also instructed the federal government to start extradition processes if he was found outside Nigeria.

Faisal later appealed his conviction while still on the run. On 24 November 2022, the Court of Appeal upheld his conviction but reduced his prison terms to seven years.

The appellate court decided that the trial court should not have given the maximum sentence to a first-time offender.

His father’s conviction

Abdulrasheed Maina, Faisal's father, was also convicted by the same judge in a different money laundering case involving around N2 billion in pension funds.

The senior Maina received an eight-year prison sentence in November 2021 after being found guilty of laundering the funds through fake bank accounts and his company, Common Input Property and Investment Limited.

He was released from prison in February 2025 after qualifying for early release due to good behavior, according to the Nigerian Correctional Service.