Tag Archives: Nigeria

Tanzania’s President Magufuli Bulldozes the Civil Service: Is This an Anticorruption Breakthrough?

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For decades (perhaps longer), the corruption problem in Sub-Saharan Africa has seemed intractable. With only a handful of exceptions (such as Botswana, and more recently Rwanda), Sub-Saharan African countries score poorly on measures like Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), and direct surveys of African citizens tend to confirm that the frequency of petty bribery, while both lower and more variable than some Westerners think, are much higher than in most other countries. Declarations of war on corruption have also been a feature of African politics for decades, to the point where both citizens themselves and outside observers have grown cynical about the will or capacity of leaders to clean up the system.

But there are some preliminary, hopeful signs that in at least some major Sub-Saharan countries, things may be starting to change for the better. The country that probably gets the most attention, at least among commentators outside of Africa, seems to be Nigeria, where President Buhari—a former strongman-style President whom some have characterized as a kind of “born-again” reformer—has made anticorruption a centerpiece of both his election campaign and his administration. (For some discussions of President Buhari’s anticorruption efforts, on this blog and elsewhere, see here, here, here, and here.) But to me—as a non-expert with only the most superficial knowledge of the region or its politics—the more interesting developments are actually occurring in Tanzania, under the administration of President John Magufuli. Continue reading →

Nigeria’s Whistleblowing Policy: A Good Start, But Not Enough

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On December 21, 2016, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Finance approved a whistleblowing program as part of the Nigerian government’s continued efforts to fight corruption. Key features of the program include the launch of an online portal for submission of tips and the establishment of a reward for “information that directly leads to the voluntary return of stolen or concealed public funds or assets” (the reward is 2.5 to 5% of the amount recovered, with the percentage decreasing as the amounts recovered increases). As over $176 million in stolen funds was recovered within the first two months of the program, the whistleblowing policy appears to be an overnight success story. Nevertheless, although stolen funds are indeed being recovered, the existing policy does not do enough to offset the risks that whistleblowers face when they come forward with information, and this deficiency may limit the long-term effectiveness of the program. In particular, there are three aspects of the program that the government ought to reform in order to encourage individuals to assume the risks associated with becoming a whistleblower, and consequently to ensure the policy’s continued success. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Did the London Summit Make a Difference to Open Contracting? Does Open Contracting Make a Difference for Tackling Procurement Corruption?

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Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership, provides today’s guest post:

Anyone remember the London Anti-Corruption Summit last May? It seems like a long, long time ago now, but it was a big deal for us when 14 countries stepped forward at the Summit to implement the Open Contracting Data Standard to open, share, and track all data and documents coming from the billions of dollars that they are spending on public contracting and procurement each year.

One year later, how well have these countries have followed through on their commitments, and how much of a difference open contracting has made in combating corruption in public procurement? After all, it is government’s number one corruption risk; it’s where money, opacity, and government discretion collide.

The news is generally positive: the Summit commitments appear to have promoted genuine progress toward more open contracting in many of those countries, and the preliminary evidence indicates that such moves help reduce procurement corruption. Continue reading →

Addressing the Risk of Corruption in the Humanitarian and Global Development Sector: The Case of the Buhari Plan

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North East Nigeria is on the brink of a major humanitarian crisis. The region has historically been marked by poverty and underdevelopment, and more recently has been ravaged by Boko Haram. In an attempt to address both the current crisis and the longstanding poverty of North East Nigeria, on October 26, 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative (PCNI) to “serve as the primary national strategy, coordination and advisory body for all humanitarian interventions, transformational and developmental efforts in the North East region of Nigeria.” PCNI is chiefly responsible for overseeing and ensuring the execution of the Buhari Plan, a four-volume, roughly 800 page, five-year blueprint for the comprehensive humanitarian relief and socioeconomic stabilization of the North East. Projects include unconditional cash transfers and the deployment of mobile health units and will be linked with the current UNOCHA Humanitarian Response Plan. The total budgetary requirement is 2.13 trillion Naira (approximately US$6.7 billion), of which the Nigerian Federal Government commits an estimated 634 billion Naira and the remaining 1.49 trillion Naira is anticipated to come from “many DFI’s, International Aid Agencies, NGO’s and the Private Sector Stakeholders.” (PCNI also replaced previous initiatives launched under former President Goodluck Jonathan: the Safe Schools Initiative (SSI), which focused on making schools safer for children, and the Presidential Initiative for the North East (PINE), whose aim was to kick start the economies in North East Nigeria and reposition the region for long-term prosperity.)

On the surface, the Buhari Plan sounds like a step in the right direction. But given the controversies over fraud and corruption surrounding PINE, PCNI’s predecessor, there are reasons to worry. Even putting those past issues aside, there is inevitably a high risk of corruption in a large government plans like the PCNI—especially in an environment as notoriously corrupt as Nigeria—and the current mechanisms for mitigating the risk of fraud and corruption are insufficient.

In order to reduce the corruption risks associated with a project like PCNI, the Nigerian government—and the international donors and other stakeholders providing financial support for the project—should focus on reducing the opportunities for corruption in three principal ways: (1) embedding a fraud prevention strategy; (2) employing external, independent auditors; and (3) maintaining transparency of activities and funding flows. To its credit, the Buhari Plan has already integrated aspects of these approaches. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement: Continue reading →

When and Why Do Corrupt Politicians Champion Corruption Reform? A Character Study

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Can corrupt leaders enact effective anticorruption reform? The brief answer seems to be yes: Leaders who are (perceived as) corrupt can initiate and support effective anticorruption reform efforts. For example, as this blog has previously discussed, President Peña-Nieto (who has repeatedly been accused of corruption and graft) supported constitutional anticorruption reforms in Mexico. Egypt’s current President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has similarly launched various anticorruption campaigns, even while fending off numerous corruption allegations.

But why do corrupt leaders institute anticorruption reforms? While there’s no universal explanation, there appear to be at least three archetypes that might help anticorruption activists identify and push unlikely reformers: The Power Player, The Top-Down Director, and The Born-Again Reformer. Continue reading →

The Lawyers’ Role in Perpetuating Corruption in Nigeria

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Nuhu Ribadu, the former head of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, spoke to lawyers in Abuja on December 1 on his experience fighting corruption in Nigeria and the role the bar played.

Ribadu came to international attention in the mid-2000s for his audacious efforts to combat the high level corruption then rampant in the country, a fight that led to attempts on his life and ultimately his illegal removal from office despite protests from Nigerian civil society and the international community.  Although Ribadu remains active in Nigerian public life, chairing a high level commission on corruption in the Nigerian oil industry and running twice (unsuccessfully) for public office, he has been relatively silent on the obstacles he faced as head of the EFCC.  In his December 1 speech, unfortunately at this writing still not available online, he explains how some of Nigeria’s most prestigious lawyers, known as SANs or Senior Advocate Nigeria, collaborate with some of Nigeria’s most corrupt actors to frustrate the country’s effort to eradicate corruption at the highest levels of government.

For the benefit of his friends in the international community (of which this writer is one) as well as for a useful insight on one of the challenges of tackling grand corruption, below are excerpts from that speech as reported in the Nigerian press. Continue reading →

Suing Governments For Corruption Before International Tribunals: SERAP v. Nigeria

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Last week I reported that the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project or SERAP , a Nigerian NGO, was being sued by the country’s former first lady for urging the authorities to investigate her for receiving “small gifts” ($15 million in total) while her husband served in government, first as Governor of the oil-rich state of Bayelsa, then as Vice-President and later President.  While the saga of the first lady and her “small gifts” recently took another unusual (bizarre?) legal twist, this week the focus is on SERAP and one its most creative approaches to combating corruption in Nigeria: the precedent setting suit it brought against the Government of Nigeria in the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States  for corruption in education.

The ECOWAS Court is one of several regional international tribunals established to hear disputes between neighboring countries, in its case 15 states in West Africa.  The Court’s statute also grants it jurisdiction to entertain actions against a member state for human rights violations.  In 2007 SERAP took advantage of this provision to bring the Government of Nigeria before the bar of justice for its failure to curb massive corruption in the agency funding schools in disadvantaged areas of the country.  While SERAP’s argument was straightforward — Nigeria’s inability to curb corruption denied citizens’ their constitutionally guaranteed right to education – the SERAP suit appears to be a first: a human rights action based on a state’s failure to control corruption.

The Nigerian government lodged several objections in opposition: SERAP had to take its case first to Nigerian courts; the ECOWAS Court had no jurisdiction to hear the matter; SERAP had no standing to sue; the right to education was not justiciable.  But in its landmark decision in favor of SERAP the Court swept all of them aside, ruling that corruption in education could constitute a violation of the right to education if government did not make a serious effort to prosecute the corrupt officials and recover the stolen funds.  SERAP v. Nigeria stands as an important precedent for civil society groups in countries where governments are unwilling to address deeply-ingrained, high level corruption that denies citizens constitutionally guaranteed rights.  It also demonstrates how an energetic civil society group committed to fighting corruption can find a creative legal argument to unlock the courthouse door.

Details on the case are in this paper by Adetokunbo Mumuni, SERAP’s Executive Director and its lead counsel in the action.  The paper is the eighth in a series commissioned by the Open Society Justice Initiative on civil society and anticorruption litigation.  It follows earlier ones on i) standing by GAB editor-in-chief Matthew Stephenson, ii) civil society litigation in India by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy Director Arghya Sengupta, iii) private suits for defrauding government by Houston Law School Professor David Kwok, iv) private prosecution in the U.K. by Tamlyn Edmonds and David Jugnarain, v) damages for bribery under American law by this writer, vi) public trust theory by Professor Elmarie van der Schyff, a professor of law at South Africa’s North-West University, and vii) private suits for corruption in public procurement by Abiola Makinwa, a lecturer in commercial law at the Hague University of Applied Sciences.  All papers are available here on the JI Web site.