Dakar court postpones Mame Mbaye Niang vs Ousmane Sonko property dispute to July 22

The high court of Dakar has postponed to July 22, 2026, the case pitting Mame Mbaye Niang against Ousmane Sonko. The delay was granted at the request of the former prime minister’s lawyers, allowing them to respond to the legal filings already submitted.

Mame Mbaye Niang had taken Ousmane Sonko to court seeking the annulment of what he claims was a fraudulent transfer of a property. The plaintiff is demanding that the villa owned by Ousmane Sonko in the Cité Keur Gorgui neighborhood be re-registered in his name so he can recover the 200 million CFA francs in damages awarded by the courts.

Ousmane Sonko was definitively sentenced to two months in prison and ordered to pay 200 million CFA francs in damages to Mame Mbaye Niang. Relying on that ruling, Niang attempted to enforce the judgment but encountered an obstacle: the leasehold right to the villa, located on a 264-square-meter plot at lot R/17 in Cité Keur Gorgui, appears to have been transferred to the name of the family of the Pastef leader.

According to Mame Mbaye Niang and his legal team, this transfer was a deliberate maneuver to make Ousmane Sonko insolvent and place the property beyond the reach of seizure. They suspect the former minister of knowingly transferring the house to evade enforcement of the financial penalty.

The case had initially been heard before being adjourned to June 10. That earlier postponement allowed Mame Mbaye Niang’s lawyers to prepare their response to the arguments submitted by Ousmane Sonko’s defense.