The West and Nigeria’s anti-corruption fight

President Muhammadu Buhari, speaking at the recently concluded 70th General Assembly of the United Nations, urged other world leaders to do more to return stolen funds and assets to their countries of origin. He was correct to focus his speech on what he considers Nigeria’s greatest present challenges: corruption and illicit financial flows.

The president said: “By any consideration, corruption and cross-border financial crimes are impediments to development, economic growth, and the realization of the well-being of citizens across the globe . . . In particular, I call upon the global community to urgently redouble efforts towards strengthening the mechanisms for dismantling safe havens for proceeds of corruption and ensuring the return of stolen funds and assets to their countries of origin.”

On his part, President Buhari pledged Nigeria’s willingness under his leadership to partner with international agencies and individual countries on a bilateral basis to confront crimes and corruption.

We must commend the president’s singular resolve and determination to ensure that all looted funds from the country stashed in foreign countries are located and returned to Nigeria and his commitment to firmly tackling the crimes of corruption in the country. However, like many of his actions and gestures towards the West since his assumption of office, that statement portrays the president as showing disproportionate faith and trust in the good intentions of Western countries and their willingness to help Nigeria tackle its many challenges. This, at best, is being naive.

We know from history and experience that the same Western countries that accuse African countries of corruption are the ones that compete to receive the stolen funds from corrupt leaders for safe keeping. These funds were profitably ploughed into those economies to generate jobs and growth. All attempts to get them to stop the practice then was met with the argument that it was a private matter between the depositors and the banks involved and that the state was unable to intervene.

However, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in the United States and subsequent attacks in other Western capitals, these countries wasted no time in clamping down on terrorism funding by going after funds hidden in Western capitals for such purposes. The moment their national interests were involved, the privacy between the banks and the owners of the funds no longer mattered. All that was important was the determination to prevent terrorists from having access to funds to plan and execute more terrorist attacks.

But the stashing of the proceeds of corruption by African leaders and officials in Western capitals does not appear to pose any immediate threat to their national security and so it is difficult to stop, not to talk of returning, such funds to their countries of origin. That is why, for instance, 17 years after the death of Sani Abacha and the countless man-hour wasted in shuttle diplomacy by former President Obasanjo, a great percentage of the identified looted funds stashed by Abacha in various banks and locations in Western countries is yet to be returned to Nigeria. That is why also, even after the hue and cry from third world countries, Western countries continue to provide safe havens for corruptly acquired funds.

Instead of placing so much hope – which we predict will be dashed anyway – on Western countries and their willingness to cooperate with Nigeria to return stolen funds and assets, we urge President Buhari to concentrate on building strong institutions of restraints at home to prevent the looting of such funds in the first place. It is the lack of institutions and the prevalence of impunity in governance that created the opportunity for corrupt officials to freely steal and transfer such funds abroad in the first instance. Perhaps, the reluctance of Western countries to return these funds stems from the fact that previously returned funds were re-looted or mindlessly mismanaged. Controversy, for instance, has continued to trail the returned Abacha loot and no one in government is yet able to account for the funds. In like manner, it is a known fact that if the British government were to return the Ibori loot today, the money may still find its way back to Ibori’s coffers as he is said to still control the politics of Delta State from his prison cell in the United Kingdom and even decides who gets what, when and how in the state.