There has been a steady stream of news from America. America has a new president who blitzed into office with a stream of executive orders that have shaken up things in some cases and, in others, turned things upside down. In one corner of the country, there is a raging fire and, in the other, there is a raging winter. But the other news out of America is that the country is repatriating a token $52 million loot to Nigeria.
The money is allegedly part of the loot that former petroleum minister and OPEC president, Diezani Allison-Madueke, stole from Nigerian public funds during her tenure as minister.
In the alleged looting game, this is a significantly small amount—so small, in fact, that it could be used to purchase a billionaire’s plaything, a big oga’s toy. In fact, they only had to sell one toy to recover this amount of money they are returning to Nigeria. The toy happened to be a superyacht, The Galactica Star, once rented by celebrity couple Jay Z and Beyoncé but which, in fact, belonged to one Nigerian oil magnate, Kolawole Aluko. Aluko is one of four defendants accused of cheating Nigeria out of almost $1.8 billion in siphoned crude oil sales. The other defendant is Madam Madueke.
Of course, she has denied the allegations of the existence of a “Diezani loot” through a statement issued by her lawyer. But the links between Madueke and Aluko have been strong, as she herself had mentioned during her interrogation by British police.
It was no coincidence that Aluko came into prominence in 2011 when the Nigerian government awarded oil blocks on a no-bid basis to two companies Aluko founded and owned. One of those companies, Atlantic Energy, was created a day before the deals to acquire multimillion-dollar oil licences were signed. Mrs Madueke was the petroleum minister at the time.
She was also the minister when a former CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, alleged that about $20 billion had gone missing from Nigeria’s oil revenue. So Diezani has a lot to answer for in terms of her stewardship of the nation’s resources. And Nigeria has a lot to answer about its recovery of looted funds.
This will not be the first time looted funds are being returned to Nigeria. The infamous alleged Abacha loot provided a great source of chatter and resources for the country. Promises were made about how the recovered loot would be used to transform the lives of Nigerians. Transparency International, that intrepid corruption watchdog, estimated that Abacha looted about $5 billion. That seems like child’s play now compared to the numbers being mentioned in relation to Diezani. Of that figure, an estimated $3 billion has been returned by Switzerland, the US, and the British Dependency of Jersey, among others.
The handling of the recovered loot has been wrapped in folds of bureaucratic darkness that a Federal High Court in Abuja only last July ordered the Tinubu government to account for all the Abacha loot returned since 1999, including how the money was used and all the agreements signed on this loot since. We are still waiting for those documents.
When they do appear, if ever they do appear, I am sure they would show that the recovered loot has been looted and that a significant number of Nigerian lives have not been improved by the recovered funds.
In 2015, with the ouster of the Jonathan government, a pledge was made by the successive administration to release a list of corrupt public officials who entered a deal with the government and returned some of their loot. While some of them might have entered these deals in return for anonymity, it is ironic that no sort of record of the recovered funds was made public.
This pervasive corruption is what is causing the US not to hand over the recent cache of recovered funds directly into government coffers. The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, explained that the agreement with the US entails $50m of the money going through the World Bank to support rural electrification projects. The remaining $2.88m would be channelled to the International Institute of Justice to strengthen the justice system and promote anti-corruption efforts.
Like a father scolding a child with the propensity to create chaos, the US Ambassador to Nigeria, Richard Mills, called on the Ministry of Justice to “guarantee that these funds are used transparently and effectively to improve the lives of Nigerians.” I wish that it would be so.
All of this is an indictment. That in recovering our common wealth, we cannot even be trusted enough to use that money for the good of our people and have to be slapped with cumbersome protocols to access the funds and stern avuncular warnings demanding accountability. It is even embarrassing that in this age, in the 21st century, we are still budgeting money for rural electrification, despite the huge resources that we have had at our disposal.
Other countries have moved past this and are focused on building a future for their people while we are still trying to overcome challenges that these countries overcame a century ago. It does not make sense why fuel scarcity, water shortages, and epileptic electricity supplies, in parts of the country lucky enough to have this infrastructure, are making a show on presidential campaign promises.
While this is not a lot of money compared to what Diezani and her allies are alleged to have stolen, it is significant enough to make a huge difference in the lives of Nigerians and transform our economy.
It would also mean a lot if the allocation designated for promoting the fight against corruption is actually used to stem the haemorrhaging of our public funds, as it was supposed to do. There is no better time to stop corruption than now. There is not a better time to start changing the lives of Nigerians than now with whatever resources we are able to recover.
Will this story be any different from the previous ones, or are we just setting up for another loot of the loot and mass disappointment for Nigerians?