Nigerians and the "Around" Syndrome. By Pius Adesanmi.

When approaching the evolution of corruption in Nigerian national life – and the modes in which Nigerians frame and discuss it – it is advisable to arm yourself with the word, “around.” That word has peculiar usages of indeterminacy which enables the English language to carry the weight of the exaggerated dimensions of Nigerian reality.

The Nigerian does not meet you at Ikeja mall; he meets you around Ikeja mall.

The Nigerian does not meet you at 4 o’clock; he meets you around 4 o’clock.

The Nigerian state and the people cannot tell the world precisely how much the country has lost to thieving politicians and corrupt government officials in the last one and a half years, straddling the dying months of the administration of former President Jonathan and the opening months of the administration of President Buhari.

Nigeria’s favorite word, “around”, has come in handy in establishing a rough idea of the benumbing scale of a corruption drama which largely accounts for the fall of the immediate past administration and has also played a significant role in colouring public perception of the new administration.

It all started “around” the end of the 2013 fiscal year when Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, wrote a much publicized letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, notifying him of a $20 billion shortfall in the accounting books of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Translation: $20 billion had vanished from the Nigerian treasury without a trace.

This news led to a firestorm which dominated much of 2014, pitching the CBN Governor against the President (who felt that his administration had been targeted), Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the then Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, and Diezani Alison-Madueke, then Minister of Petroleum. In the ensuing war of words, the CBN Governor revised the missing figures a few times while those at the receiving end of his allegations initially denied flat out that any funds were missing before gradually owning up to funds improperly accounted for in the accounting procedure.

Unable to determine exactly how much was missing or improperly accounted for, the Nigerian people and her government went about things the Nigerian way – around! Depending on who was talking or writing, around $20 billion was missing; around $15 billion was missing; around $10 billion was missing. The National Assembly and other institutions of state set up inquiries ‘around’ each of these figures at varying times.

President Jonathan lost the election. Enter President Buhari and his change mantra pegged on a promise to confront corruption head-on. With a new government in town, the anti-corruption institutions of state, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Code of Conduct Tribunal, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ostensibly received a boost. A narrative developed that President’s Buhari’s “body language” had begun to provide a fillip for the work of these national agencies.

The consequence was a rash of arrests and arraignments of past and serving officials of state – and in some instances their spouses. The wife of the current Senate President was arrested and arraigned before her husband was charged with allegations of corruption and fraudulent asset declaration. The arraignment of the Senate President overlapped with a certain vigour with which certain officials of the pension’s board were being prosecuted for a monumental pension scam. The common denominator of these rash of scams and arraignments was the ever-changing figures bandied around simultaneously in naira and dollars: around X dollars or around X naira had been misappropriated by the accused.

Of all the recent corruption scams and scandals, nothing has come close to the scale of the recent revelations about the theft of massive sums of money voted for the purchase of arms to equip the Nigerian Army in the fight against Boko Haram. In what is now nationally known as Dasukigate, the National Security Adviser to President Jonathan, Sambo Dasuki, personalized arms funds and became a distributor of slush funds to favored friends and servicers of President Jonathan’s administration. The revelations are still ongoing and, as with all things Nigerians, the figures are indeterminate. Depending on who you are reading, Dasuki stole and shared with prominent Nigerians around $3 billion or around $2 billion of funds meant to fight terrorism.

The Abacha loot, recently returned to Nigerian authorities by the Swiss government has also been subject to Nigeria’s cultural abhorrence of precision. Ever since the funds were released to Nigeria, conflicting figures of how much Nigeria received have saturated the airwaves: around $500 million, around $600 million.

Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the former finance Minister who received and administered the funds on behalf of Nigeria, has not helped matters. The figures she received – and how it was spent – have been changing and shifting depending on whether she is addressing audiences in Washington or Nigeria. Even Google has found a way to cope with the befuddling and imprecise figures of Nigerian corruption. If you consult her, Google simply gives you entries ranging from $500 million to $ 5 billion. The idea being that you are welcome to name any figure within that range and preface it with “around” in accordance with the practice in Nigeria.

Despite the deluge of indeterminate or, even, undeterminable figures that have been rolling out of Nigeria’s corruption industry in recent months, it is pertinent to note that the Nigerian authorities have not been known to have successfully prosecuted any high-profile corruption case. The much-touted anti-corruption war is still largely characterized by celebrity arrests and arraignments followed by a predictable pattern of bungled prosecution by the Nigerian government. Not even President Buhari’s reputation as a no-nonsense anti-corruption fighter has been able to sufficiently galvanize the nation he leads into a collective, transcendental desire to confront the incubus of corruption.

There are factors responsible for this, chief among which is the fact that everything in Nigeria is massively overdetermined by bitter ethnic and religious divisions. These divisions which have led to national calamities such as a civil war, coups, and counter-coups make consensus over straightforward issues of ethics and morality impossible in the Nigerian equation. ‘A thief is a thief’ would be a simple straightforward axiom anywhere except in Nigeria. In Nigeria, one man’s thief is another man’s chief, depending on religion and ethnicity.

Put, differently, the politics of theft is far more important than the fact of theft in Nigeria. No matter the amount involved, the ethnicity and the religion of the accused is what the Nigerian is instinctively programmed to determine before anything else. The question – did he steal? – is secondary to – is he Yoruba, Igbo, or Hausa? Is he Muslim or Christian? What is his political affiliation?

The politics of theft makes national consensus about what is theft and what is corruption impossible. This has made it impossible for President Buhari to mobilize Nigerians across all the country’s fault lines behind his stated goal of confronting corruption. However, he has not helped matters in terms of what is necessary to solidify national confidence in his anti-corruption efforts. There has been a marked failure to understand the power of symbolic confidence-building gestures.

President Buhari and his deputy literally had to be dragged kicking and screaming to fulfil their electoral promise of openly declaring their assets. Nigeria boasts eleven jets in her presidential fleet, making it one of the biggest presidential fleets in the world.

During the electoral campaign season, President Buhari agreed with the Nigerian people that it is morally reprehensible for Nigeria to maintain eleven Presidential jets and condemned his predecessor for ostentation and irresponsibility. Nearly a year into his own administration, President Buhari seems to have discovered the joys of owning a fleet of nearly a dozen jumbo jets and all talk of disposing of them have been brushed under the carpet. Vice-President Osinbajo, who had been the loudest in the anti-corruption decibel of the administration, did not see the contradiction in going to publicly support a gubernatorial candidate who had been indicted by the anti-corruption agency of his own administration.

In essence, despite the enormous goodwill enjoyed by the current administration in Nigeria and despite a number of commendable steps taken thus far in kick-starting the anti-corruption war, the administration has been short on symbolic confidence-building measures that could potentially rally the people around the need to confront corruption.

There have been allegations of political lopsidedness in the anti-corruption effort of President Buhari. That, however, is of no moment. Given the severity of Nigeria’s ethnic, religious, and political divisions, nobody can fight corruption without having to deal with such allegations of lopsidedness, very often marketed by those who have lost out in the yam sharing bazaar that is the business of modern statehood in Nigeria.

Consequently, the Buhari administration needs not be fazed by charges of lopsidedness so long as she remains fair and just in the anti-corruption war. What needs to be done is to increase confidence-building measures by President Buhari and his team. It may also not be a bad idea to start looking into the possibility of institutions of state and public officials being more precise in the announcement of corruption figures. This, sadly, may be a tall order in a country that has never been able to accurately count the number of citizens she has.

What is the population of Nigeria?

Depending on who you ask or which institution of state is announcing population figures, there are around 160 million to 180 million Nigerians!

By Pius Adesanmi

Obasanjo, Change, Corruption, And Hypocrisy By Moses E. Ochonu

This is a season of change. It is also a season of rank hypocrisy. Politicians who supervised previous regimes of corruption and perfidy have been emboldened by the change slogan of the moment to stake their rehabilitation on a pretended fondness for ethical and moral rectitude.

Olusegun Obasanjo

Change, it seems, is being equated with the proverbial scriptural blood that washes away a multitude of sins. No one better epitomizes the spirit of times, this ascendance of self-righteous hypocrisy, than former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

Obasanjo has been touring the country with glee and sanctimonious pageantry. The other day, he was in my home State of Benue at the behest of Governor Samuel Ortom. At a dinner organized in his honor at which he was entertained and sartorially rebranded in Benue traditional attire, he shamelessly impersonated a moral sage. He passed himself off as a moral icon and, like true exemplars of virtue and ethical discipline who espouse, through sheer righteous charisma, the virtue of altruism and ethical infallibility, Obasanjo performed the role to a hilt and with a passion that can only come from overcompensation. He offered advice to the governor on using the resources of the state to improve the lot of the citizens and on the evil of appropriating resources belonging to the people.

He has been doing the same act at other forums and in other States. When he is not on a rostrum waxing sanctimonious about how politicians and leaders have let Nigerians down, he is issuing statements lamenting how corruption has destroyed or is destroying Nigeria. Nigeria, Obasanjo has been saying in interviews and speeches is a country hobbled by corruption.

Is he not one of the politicians who let Nigeria down? Was he not a two-time leader of Nigeria who deserves, by virtue of the multiple opportunities he had to positively alter the course of the country, the bulk of the blame for the problem he glibly analyzes? These questions would require some self-reflexivity to be refracted back to Obasanjo. Unfortunately, he lacks the capacity for reflection and self-critique. And so he persists in advertising himself as incapable of grasping irony. He says past governments (excluding his own?) have frittered away Nigeria’s opportunity for greatness.

Says the man who became president in 1999, his then protégé, el-Rufai, informed us, with only 15,000 Naira in his bank account and with his Otta farm in shambles but who left the presidency in 2007 a multi-billionaire.

Says the man who as president bought shares worth N600 million in Transcorp, a firm he set up and helped to acquire several choice public assets for peanuts. Says the man who now owns a university, the richest and most expansive farming empire in Nigeria, and a presidential library funded by those who were contractors to his government or had benefitted from state windfalls.

Says the man who bribed legislators with billions of naira to secure a third presidential term through a corrupt and doomed constitutional amendment process. Says the man under whose presidency N300 billion appropriated for federal road rehabilitation was transformed into a re-election slush fund under the supervision of then Works Minister, Tony Anenih.

Says the man under whose superintending watch $10 billion was wasted on power sector projects that yielded darkness and further deterioration in Nigeria’s electricity infrastructure.

Says the man who invented and operationalized “do or die” as an electoral manifesto and as a precursor to a scorched earth philosophy of governance.

Says the man who was caught red-handed transporting dollars on the presidential aircraft through his then aide, Andy Ubah. Says the man whose secretive corrupt dealings were scandalously exposed by Atiku Abubakar and Garba Shehu during the infamous Atiku-Obasanjo political feud, which morphed into mutual corruption revelations concerning the use of the PDTF as a personal and Party piggy bank.

Says the man who owns the Green Legacy Resort, Abeokuta, arguably the most prestigious and expensive hotel/golf resort in Nigeria.

Says the man whose fingerprints are all over the Halliburton bribery scandal and who was spectacularly implicated in sworn testimony and court records by convicted British-American bribe distributor, Jeffrey Tessler.

It's hardly Obasanjo's fault though that he is now regarded as the conscience or moral voice of Nigeria. With such an amnesiac citizenry, even Hitler, were he to come back from the dead in Nigeria, would find himself on the path to complete redemption. That's just who we are as a people.

All Obasanjo had to do was hop on the change train for all to be forgiven. In truth, he was already well on his way to total redemption before the change election.

The cover of change has continued not only to shield many of yesterday’s thieves but to also empower them with a strange form of moral hubris. Obasanjo’s hubristic performances during his ongoing national honor tour are a pointer to what’s to come in this genre.

At this rate of national forgetting, former President Jonathan needs only five years to achieve full rehabilitation and go on his own national anticorruption speaking tour. But I am reminded that his rehabilitation may have already begun and he may have already embarked on his own tour of moral pedagogy, given the many pro-Jonathan iconographies and textual material that flow through my Facebook page every day. Again, that’s just who we are.

In other climes, when you commit the kinds of crime committed by the likes of Obasanjo, good gestures and deeds done after the crime can only earn you a few privileges — in prison! And a reduced sentence if you are lucky. Not canonization as your country's patron saint of anticorruption, patriotism, and ethics.

But this is Nigeria, a country of notoriously short memories and a generous knack for offering unearned forgiveness to the villains of our national political story.

The author can be reached at meochonu@gmail.com

Buhari won’t spare Jonathan if ex-president is proven corrupt –Presidency

In Nigeria’s ongoing war against corruption, President Muhammadu Buhari will not spare anyone who has a case to answer, and his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, would face justice if guilty, presidential spokesperson, Femi Adesina, has said.

Mr. Adesina told PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday, when he visited the newspaper’s office in Abuja, that Mr. Buhari has “no accord” to shield any corrupt person from prosecution.

“There is no accord,” he said, “if the corruption fight needs to get there (making Mr. Jonathan face justice), it will get there.”

Several top officials who served under Mr. Jonathan, as well as his political associates in the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party, are currently being tried, or investigated by the Economic and Financial crimes Commission, for corruption.

A major case involves a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, accused of diverting $2.1 billion arms money, and sharing same to politicians and cronies of the former president.

According to investigators, Mr. Dasuki said he was authorized by Mr. Jonathan to release the money for the nation’s security programmes, and for the 2015 presidential campaign.

The spokesperson for the PDP, Olisa Metuh, also said he received payment from Mr. Dasuki after carrying out some assignments for the former president.

Those claims have raised questions regarding whether Mr. Jonathan, whom Mr. Buhari assured during transfer of power in 2015, that he had nothing to fear, would face prosecution should it be proven he has a case to answer.

Mr. Buhari has also been accused of bias against the PDP.

That allegations gained traction last week after his associate and party member, Jafaru Isa, was released by the EFCC despite facing what appeared a similar allegation as that against Mr. Metuh, the PDP spokesperson.

But Mr. Adesina denied the allegations against the president.

“There is no accord that if corruption is proven, it will not be tried,” he said of the former president. “With this president, nobody will be protected. And I underscore it, if it needs to get anywhere, it will get there.”

He emphasized that there was no agreement prior to the March 2015 presidential election that Mr. Jonathan would not be made to face trial if corruption allegations were proven against him.

Mr. Adesina denied Mr. Buhari’s involvement in the release of Mr. Isa after the APC member reportedly returned N100 million out of N170 million he was accused of unlawfully receiving from Mr. Dasuki.

“If the President had wanted to protect him, he would not have been arrested in the first place”, Mr. Adesina said.

He said investigations into other sectors, such as banking, and petroleum, would soon start.

Source: http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/197174-buhari-wont-spare-jonathan-if-ex-president-is-proven-corrupt-presidency.html

PRESIDENT BUHARI TO SERVE AS GRAND PATRON OF COMMITTEE ON CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY

President Muhammadu Buhari Thursday in Abuja accepted an invitation to serve as Grand Patron of the Committee Empowering Corporate Philanthropy in Nigeria.

Receiving the group led by Nigeria's former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Dr. Christopher Kolade, at the Presidential Villa, President Buhari said that the Federal Ministry of Health will work in close concert with the committee.

The committee has "Big War Against Cancer" as its focal point for 2016.

Dr. Kolade told President Buhari that the committee was out to promote philanthropy nationwide, and to encourage organizations and individuals to use their resources to help others.

“As father of the nation, we want you to be our Grand Patron, so that you can give us the benefit of your support for the things we do. Your integrity and credibility will serve us in good stead,” Dr. Kolade said.

He added that the war against cancer can be won, if both the government and the private sector support the acquisition of mobile cancer centres, which could be deployed in all states of the federation, and Abuja.

President Buhari was decorated with the garland of the committee and presented with a plaque of the organization.

FEMI ADESINA
Special Adviser to the President,
(Media and Publicity)
January 21, 2016

PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI'S OFFICIAL VISIT TO UAE: THE MAJOR TAKEAWAYS BY GARBA SHEHU

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari spent the first three days of this week visiting the United Arab Emirates, UAE, the first by a Nigerian leader since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states in the early 80s.

The high-level visit to the world's second largest Arab economy marked an indication of the strengthening of relations between this country and Middle-East after many years this being in the back burner.

As part of his visit, President Buhari held talks with the effective head of the government, His Highness Sheikh Muhammad Bin Zayad Al-Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the UAE armed forces. Apart from the bilateral talks at which critical issues such as trade, investment, security, war against corruption and energy were discussed, the President participated in the World Future Energy Summit, itself dominated by climate change and energy issues. The visit was also packed with a wide range of business meetings with business leaders in the UAE to attract investments leading to jobs creation and the larger goal of economic development in Nigeria.

On Tuesday before his departure home, the President addressed a group of African Ambassadors, had a session with Nigerian professionals before meeting a larger group made up of members of the Nigerian Community in the UAE.

At the meeting with the Nigerians in that country, President gave a resounding off-the -cuff speech in which he addressed the major issues of security, trade, war against corruption, challenges in foreign exchange transfers as part of the larger issues affecting the economy and as to be expected, employment and opportunities for diasporas back at home.

When he ended his speech, the highly impacted audience members rose to their feet to give him a standing ovation.

The high point of the President's visit was the signing of a wide range of agreements. These agreements are the first by the Buhari administration since it came into office and are on the threshold of the major policies of government, namely security, economy and corruption.

It is noteworthy that in the nearly-thirty years of the existing relations between Nigeria and the UAE, only three Memoranda of Understanding, MOUs were signed at various times in the past. This was the first time an agreement was signed and it is historically important that there were six of such agreements put on the table from the start. Four of these are agreements on Mutual Legal Assistance, MLA and the balance of two, relating to trade and investment.

The one that immediately caught public attention is the agreement on criminal matters to facilitate " the widest measure of Mutual Legal Assistance" to improve the effectiveness of both countries in the investigation and prosecution of crime, and the confiscation of criminal proceeds.

Under this agreement, proceeds of crime were defined to include "any assets derived or realized, directly and indirectly, by any person as a result of criminal conduct or the value of any asset, "asset" itself defined as " money and all kinds of moveable or immovable or tangible or intangible property, and include any interest on such property."

With this milestone agreement, it is expected that stolen assets such as the ones by a high-profile banker who was jailed by the EFCC a few years ago, estimated in billions of Naira in real estate and shares held in Dubai may be returned to Nigeria. Now, there is a legal basis to ask for the return of such assets.

The second MLA on criminal matters, which is equally expected to bolster President Muhammadu Buhari's war against corruption is the agreement on extradition between the two states.

By this, each of the states has agreed to "extradite to the other," upon request and subject to the provisions of the agreement "any person who is found in the territory of the Requested Party(say UAE) and is wanted in the Requesting Party (say Nigeria) for any prosecution or trial or execution of a sentence in respect of an extraditable offense committed within the jurisdiction of the Requesting Party."

The agreement defines extraditable offenses as those that are punishable under the laws of both countries by a term of imprisonment of not less than two years "or by a more severe penalty."

The third MLA is to facilitate the rehabilitation and reintegration of sentenced persons into society through giving them the opportunity to serve their sentence in their own countries.

The last of the four Mutual Legal Agreements deals with civil and commercial matters.

By this, each of the two states shall grant each other support in the service of summons and other judicial documents or processes; taking of evidence and in the execution of decrees, settlements and arbitral awards.
It is important to note that this agreement will apply to any civil or commercial matter before or after the signing of this agreement.

The two other agreements are for the reciprocal promotion and protection of investments and for the avoidance of double taxation. These ones were drawn to intensify economic cooperation between Nigeria and the UAE and to create conditions conducive to investments by nationals and companies of both countries.

These last two agreements are critical to the success of the economic side of the visit.

The Crown Prince and some of the business leaders the President met had shown an effusive determination to place investments in Nigeria. However, by their investment tradition, the UAE does not invest in a country with which they don't have a protection agreement. This is what was just signed.

With an eye on UAE's outsized Sovereign Wealth Fund, officially put at USD 800 billion (but unofficially at over three trillion Dollars), Nigerian officials are eager to start work on the expansion of economic cooperation between the two states.

On the security front, President Buhari and the Crown Prince discussed a range of regional and global issues. The UAE has agreed to assist Nigeria in the war against Boko Haram terrorism and in the rehabilitation of the damaged, North-East subregion of the country. They are sending an assessment team of the Emirates Red Crescent to the affected areas to find out precisely what is most needed for that country's intervention.

A two-man, high-level committee was set up by the two countries to coordinate the incoming support for the North-East. The contact person for Nigeria is General Babagana Munguno, the National Security Adviser. His UAE counterpart is the Group CEO of the conglomerate Mubadalah. The two would be meeting every three months to review progress in this effort.

While both countries left off to further scrutinize the signed agreements in case there are areas to be amended, there is also the indication that a number of other agreements are in the pipeline to strengthen security and economic cooperation between the two. The country which parades two of the world's most successful airlines, the Emirates and Etihad is interested in assisting Nigeria restart a national airline.

Another of these upcoming agreements will lead to the opening of the UAE market for Nigerian exports. The one being worked on security cooperation is to bind the ministries of interior to information sharing to fight corruption and terrorism.

The two leaders also emphasized their cooperation on climate change and energy issues. By this, it is expected that the UAE will key into the President's plan to boost access to electricity by tapping into the abundant renewable energy resources available to this country. The UAE has built a whole city that relies on solar energy that is reportedly carbon-free. Climate change is a major topic of concern to President Muhammadu Buhari.

Another line of discussion between the two states will feature plans on the regeneration of the Lake Chad, to reduce poverty in the region and cut African emigration to Europe.

In the assessment of officials on both sides, the visit scored big on issues of security, environment, trade and investment and the war against corruption.

The President was accompanied on the delegation by the NSA and the ministers of Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Trade and Investment, Environment, State Minister Petroleum and that of Works, Power and Housing.

Garba Shehu 

Senior Special Assistant to the President, SSAP( Media and Publicity).

God has hands in Nigeria’s economic challenges – Oyegun

The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun on Thursday said that Nigeria’s present economic downturn could be an act of God to remind Nigeria on the need to implement and embrace radical change, particularly in the country’s current economic model.‎

Chief Oyegun made the disclosure when he received in audience a 15-member delegation of an APC support group, Change Agents Foundation (CAF) led by its Director-General, Dr. Felix Felix at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja.

His words: “I think God has a hand in the current economic predicament of the country. Imagine the sudden fall in the price of crude oil, the mainstay of the Nigerian economy, from its heights in 2014, averaging $112 per barrel down to the current price of $28 per barrel — lower than the $38 per barrel which the proposed 2016 budget is predicated on.

“It is an object lesson for us. It tells us that we must embrace radical change in our economic model."

According to him, the fall in oil price has taken its toll on the revenue and expenditure of the Federal Government and as a result is having a severe effect on the economy.

“The concept of change is a difficult one. Nigeria must be ready to adapt to new ways of doing things. As a party, we know and understand it calls for tremendous sacrifice, there is no other way.

“Yes the economy is in a bad shape, but maybe that is the kick we need to be innovative and find ways to drive the economy out of the woods.

“The luck we have is that we have as president a man committed to personal probity and sincerity of purpose to the project of developing Nigeria. Today, we must think and be innovative in ways of fashioning out new economic models which diversifies from the present over reliance on oil.

“We are in the process of organising a three-day dialogue which will bring the party, government and stakeholders for an exposition on the realities facing the country, particular the economy.  It will provide an opportunity to exchange ideas so that we go home with a clear direction on how to go forward.”

Also speaking at the meeting, the Director-General, CAF, Dr. Felix congratulated the APC National Chairman for leading the APC to victory at the last presidential election which ushered in the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

He said: “We are here to identify with you in this success and to say that while achieving success is a difficult thing, sustaining success is even more difficult. It is this realisation that prompted our coming together to form the Change Agents Foundation.”

The Director-General said the fight against corruption being waged by the Buhari-led administration is already yielding results.

“Our party promised Nigerians Change and this change Nigerians have already started experiencing through the unprecedented simplicity and transparency our leader, President Muhammadu Buhari has brought to governance of Nigeria.

“The fight against corruption has already started yielding results as looted public funds are being exposed and returned while everybody occupying public office today is conscious of his actions knowing that there would be consequences for any inaction or wrong action.” Dr. Felix said.

The CAF Director-General requested the National Secretariat of the APC to register the organisation to enable it contribute its quota towards efforts to deliver on the Change Mantra and objectives of the APC.

The 15-member delegation included: Dr. Felix Felix; Henry Odili, Engr. Paul Iheayichukwu; Philip Chikwe; Amb. Tony Anucha; Amb. Alban Paulinus; Eze Emeghara; Amb. Prince Uzoka Emeka; Hon. Tubonemi Aggo; Engr. Iroigak Ikann; Iyke Oginah; Chigbo Eligwe; Awu Pereowei Kelvin; Comrade George Jeremiah Oba and Graham Waribo (Secretary-General).

The Nation

Nigeria ex-pres used $2bn meant to fight Boko Haram for failed re-election bid – minister

A group of 55 people, including cabinet ministers, state governors, bankers and businessmen stole $6.8 billion from Nigeria’s public coffers over seven years, a minister has claimed. The sum includes $2.1 billion meant to fight terrorist group Boko Haram.

"If we don't kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria," Information Minister Lai Mohammed said on Monday. He failed to provide any proof to support the figures or identify any of the alleged thieves, however.

Boko Haram is among the most violent terrorist groups in the world, raiding villages and towns in Africa, sending suicide bombers to attack Christian churches and committing other acts of violence. The insurgency led by the group has claimed the lives of an estimated 20,000 people over the past six years.

The minister said ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s People's Democratic Party (PDP) diverted $2.1 billion meant to buy weapons to fight Boko Haram for Jonathan’s failed election campaign.

The alleged embezzlement took place between 2006 and 2013. Jonathan lost the March 2015 election to Muhammadu Buhari, a 73-year-old former military ruler, who returned to power on a promise to halt corruption and violence in the oil-rich country.

According to a breakdown provided by Mohammed of the stolen funds, the other $742.42 million was embezzled by 15 governors, $2.65 billion by bankers and $35.35 million by four former ministers.

Mohammed was speaking in the capital Abuja as he launched a corruption awareness campaign. He denied the PDP’s allegation that the government of President Buhari is conducting a witch hunt against the opposition.

Nigeria, one of the world’s leading oil producers, has suffered for years from endemic corruption. In the early 2000s, the country was regularly ranked by Transparency International as among the 10 most corrupt countries in the world, although since then the situation has improved somewhat.

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/329397-nigeria-corruption-boko-haram/