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Nigerian Government Efforts to Fight Corruption

Since President Olusegun Obasanjo came to power in 1999, Nigeria’s highly-touted “war on corruption” has been a rhetorical centerpiece of his administration. While little was done to prosecute that “war” during President Obasanjo’s first four years in office, since 2003 important efforts have been made to make government finances more transparent and to hold corrupt officials accountable for their actions.

Improvements in Transparency

The Nigerian government has made some strides in making its finances more transparent. At the beginning of his second term, Obasanjo named former World Bank official Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as Finance Minister. She pushed through a number of modest but important reforms and took the unprecedented step of publishing the amount of monthly federal allocations to the states and local governments.³³⁹ The federal government has also published its annual budgets, in sharp contrast to most state and local governments. Nigeria was the first country to sign onto the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a voluntary initiative aimed at securing greater transparency of the payments made to resource-rich countries such as Nigeria by multinational companies working in the energy sector.³⁴⁰

Internationally, Nigeria’s image has been boosted by the perception that its government is trying to manage its finances more transparently and responsibly. The nation’s treasury has benefited from this improvement, with the government managing to secure some $18 billion in debt relief from Paris Club creditors and the return of $458 million in stolen funds that had been hidden in Swiss banks by former military ruler Sani Abacha.³⁴¹

The “War on Corruption”

In December 2002, Nigeria established the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to complement the efforts of the already-existing Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC).³⁴² The mandates of the two institutions differ but overlap in their shared pursuit of corrupt officials.³⁴³  The ICPC has gone about its work with relatively little fanfare and has been criticized in some quarters as being ponderous and ineffective. By contrast, the EFCC and its outspoken Executive Chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, have made constant headlines with their vigorous and very public attacks upon corruption in Nigeria.

In 2005 an EFCC investigation resulted in the unprecedented conviction of the former Inspector General of the Nigerian police on charges of having stolen more than $121 million in public funds.³⁴⁴ Such high-profile convictions have been rare, but sensational arrests and accusations have not. The EFCC has extensive police powers and has made liberal use of them, routinely detaining government officials and others for prolonged periods of questioning. The EFCC is also actively pursuing criminal cases against several sitting Nigerian governors; ³⁴⁵ recently arrested the son of powerful former military ruler Ibrahim Babangida;³⁴⁶ and has publicly accused Nigerian Vice President and presidential hopeful Atiku Abubakar of corruption involving more than $100 million in public funds.³⁴⁷  

The government’s collective efforts have yielded real dividends. All told, the EFCC claims to have successfully prosecuted more than 82 people on charges of corruption and fraud and recovered more than $5 billion in stolen money.³⁴⁸ The ICPC has secured convictions at a slower rate—it managed only four during the first eight months of 2006—but had more than 65 trials ongoing as of August 2006.³⁴⁹  Nigeria’s Corrupt Practices and Related Offenses Act, passed in 2000, provides steep criminal penalties for many corruption-related offenses.³⁵⁰ Nigeria’s government also ratified the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in December 2004 and is a signatory to the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption and Related Offenses.³⁵¹

Failures and Backward Steps

Corruption

For all of the publicity the Nigerian government’s anti-corruption “war” has generated, its victories have in fact been rather limited. Nigeria still ranks 142^nd out of 163 countries surveyed for Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, tied with countries such as Angola and Congo-Brazzaville. While some gains have been seen at the federal level—the World Bank has spoken of a “considerable reduction in bribery” since 2002—corruption remains rampant at all levels of Nigerian society.³⁵² In part, the lack of dramatic progress against corruption may simply reflect the scale of the task at hand. As EFCC head Nuhu Ribadu said in an interview with Human Rights Watch, “The problem started a long time ago and it has eaten deep into all sectors of society and has almost taken over our entire way of life…Everyone is involved now, even community leaders.”³⁵³  

The problem of corruption is no doubt daunting, but it is also true that President Obasanjo’s administration has often appeared hesitant to allow that work to move too far ahead. In 2003, Nigeria’s auditor general produced a scathing report that detailed pervasive corruption in federal government expenditures; President Obasanjo promptly had him fired.³⁵⁴ When Nuhu Ribadu announced in September 2006 that 31 of Nigeria’s 36 governors could face criminal charges of corruption when their terms expired, President Obasanjo moved immediately to silence him.³⁵⁵ Perhaps most damaging, aides to President Obasanjo were widely implicated in a massive scheme to bribe members of the National Assembly to support his unsuccessful bid for a third term. An investigation announced by the EFCC has thus far come to nothing.³⁵⁶

Transparency

The government’s work to promote transparency has also suffered setbacks. Most dramatically, President Obasanjo removed Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from her post in August 2006 and she ultimately resigned from government altogether. Okonjo-Iweala was widely credited as the architect of much of the government’s progress in the area of transparency.

Nigeria has also failed to push through key pieces of reform legislation that would have complemented its participation in EITI by making government expenditure at all levels more transparent. Nigeria has yet to pass the ambitious Fiscal Responsibility bill, which was introduced by former finance minister Okonjo-Iweala and has been sitting in the National Assembly for several years along with other promising reforms.³⁵⁷ Nigeria’s Senate passed the long-delayed Freedom of Information Bill in November 2006, but as of the time of writing it is unclear whether President Obasanjo will sign it into law before leaving office.³⁵⁸

More generally, a recent World Bank report found that, “While the federal government has made impressive progress in establishing and maintaining aggregate fiscal discipline, there is no evidence yet that the quality of budget expenditure has been improving.”³⁵⁹ It went on to call for “a radical change in incentives that government officials face, based on much stronger accountability for rational utilization of public funds.”³⁶⁰

“Political Motives” and Public Cynicism

Many critics have accused the government of prosecuting its “war on corruption” in a selective manner that disproportionately targets political opponents of the president. Several prominent rivals of the president have in fact been targeted for EFCC investigation, most notably Vice President Atiku Abubakar.³⁶¹ Abubakar is campaigning for presidential elections next year despite President Obasanjo’s vehement opposition.

At the same time, some rather notorious allies of the president have been left entirely unscathed. Anambra state political “godfather” Chris Uba, for example, helped to plunge his state into violence and chaos in 2004 when then-governor Chris Ngige tried to break free of his political control.³⁶² Ngige was impeached, but Chris Uba has never faced any meaningful inquiry and remains a member of the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) board of trustees. Chris Uba’s older brother Andy served in President Obasanjo’s cabinet until resigning in November 2006 and has since won the PDP nomination for Anambra’s gubernatorial race in 2007. Shortly before resigning in order to pursue that election, allegations emerged that he had been caught smuggling $170,000 in cash into the United States on board Nigeria’s presidential jet in late 2003.³⁶³ Some $45,000 of that amount allegedly went towards the purchase of equipment for President Obasanjo’s farm at Ota, Ogun State; a lawyer speaking for the president reportedly claimed that the purchase of that equipment was “unsolicited” and that the president had merely “joked” about it with Uba.³⁶⁴ The EFCC has thus far declined to investigate despite a public outcry over the affair.³⁶⁵

Apparent contradictions such as these have fostered a degree of public cynicism that has begun to undermine the legitimacy of the government’s anti-corruption drive. Whether justified or not, that skepticism has worked to the benefit of officials who find themselves the targets of investigation.

Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is the case of former Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta. The governor was arraigned in London on charges of money laundering; investigators had found nearly ₤1 million in cash in his London home.³⁶⁶ He was released on bail and quickly fled the country, allegedly by disguising himself as a woman.³⁶⁷ When he eventually reappeared in his home state, he claimed to have been transported there by God.³⁶⁸  Alamieyeseigha was subsequently impeached and is currently standing trial in Abuja.

Many Nigerians saw the governor’s actions as a national disgrace and were happy to see him put on trial. But many others, including leading Delta militant groups, have loudly demanded his release and accused the government of pursuing him for political reasons.³⁶⁹ Alamieyeseigha was widely seen as an opponent of the president, and popular cynicism has allowed many of the former governor’s defenders to argue that his alleged crimes were no different from the day-to-day conduct of other public officials who are left unmolested by the law.³⁷⁰ To this day, Alamieyeseigha’s ongoing trial is portrayed by some leading Delta militants as an injustice and as evidence of the government’s hostility to the Ijaw cause.³⁷¹

Civilian Rule without Accountability

Nigeria is nearly eight years into the longest stretch of uninterrupted civilian rule in its history as a nation. But as the example of River State illustrates so clearly, many political officeholders in Nigeria remain largely unaccountable to their constituents. Nigeria’s federal government has allowed the perpetuation of a political system that often rewards politicians who use their ill-gotten gains to mobilize violence in support of their political ambitions. In doing so, it has undermined its own efforts to fight corruption.

The elections that brought Obasanjo to power in 1999 were hailed as a milestone, but they were riddled with fraud and other basic flaws that called their legitimacy into question. Former US President Jimmy Carter summed up the conclusions of an observation mission by stating that, “Regrettably, it is not possible for us to make an accurate judgment about the outcome of the presidential election.”³⁷² The elections that brought Obasanjo a second term in 2003 were even worse, with results in several states blatantly rigged in favor of the president; one analyst estimated that up to ten million voters’ cards were fraudulently issued.³⁷³

Those elections did more than bring President Obasanjo to power. Many of the governors that the EFCC is now denouncing as corrupt helped to organize and rig the process and were themselves swept into office on the president’s coattails.

Violence and fraud was so prevalent in much of the Niger Delta in 2003 that a large proportion of the region’s population was effectively disenfranchised.³⁷⁴  Rivers State Governor Peter Odili’s re-election campaign in 2003 was an especially violent affair, with one local group describing electioneering in some parts of the state as a “low-intensity armed struggle.”³⁷⁵ Local government elections—last held in 2004 in Rivers under the supervision of Rivers’ fraudulently-elected state authorities—were no better and offered the people of the state little real hope of turning corrupt, abusive chairmen out of office.³⁷⁶  

This reality of fraud and violence that has lasting implications beyond its own importance. In Rivers State, state government officials often complain quite loudly about the graft and inactivity that characterize many local government administrations. But the state has been extremely lax in holding those officials to account, in part because state-level politicians expect the chairmen to “make returns” on their embezzled funds. Just as important, politicians at all levels rely upon the chairmen to mobilize violence and otherwise manipulate the results of state and federal elections in their constituencies. As one prominent Port Harcourt-based activist put it, “The governor never challenges the local government chairmen over their corruption because those chairmen are the governor’s champions of violence.”³⁷⁷