Both Abubakar and Tinubu have been charged with corruption. Analysts predict that this issue won’t come up during the campaign.
The fight against corruption has been a major campaign theme in Nigeria’s last two presidential elections, but neither of the two leading contenders is expected to bring it up in the run-up to the vote in February given the history of graft charges surrounding them.
The country’s anti-corruption body was just last June looking into the front-runner Bola Tinubu, who earlier this month won the candidacy of the ruling party. He contested a lawsuit filed by the US government thirty years ago accusing him of laundering heroin trafficking money, and the two parties eventually came to an agreement.
His main rival, Atiku Abubakar, took in tens of millions of dollars in “suspicious finances.” into the US.
An American congressman was imprisoned as a result of his involvement in a bribery case while he was Nigeria’s vice president in the 2000s, according to a US Senate investigation. Neither incident led to charges being brought against Abubakar.
Requests for comment from the Tinubu and Abubakar spokespeople went unanswered.
The arduous task of revitalizing Africa’s greatest economy will fall to the next president. Nigeria’s position as the top crude producer on the continent is under jeopardy due to declining oil production, rising inflation, and the fact that more than half of the working-age population is either unemployed or underemployed.
Under outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, the local currency sharply declined, falling from roughly 220 naira to the US dollar on the heavily trafficked black market when he was first elected in early 2015 to about 600 naira this week.
Despite only having a seventh of India’s population, Nigeria has the highest proportion of residents who live in extreme poverty. Large areas of the country are being terrorized by secessionists, Islamist extremists, and violent criminal gangs.
Since financial fraud and political dysfunction in Nigeria are inextricably linked, efforts to improve security and the economy alone are likely to be ineffective, according to Leena Koni Hoffmann, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London. According to her, corruption “hollows out systems and cripples them from the inside.”
Compared to Buhari
The two affluent septuagenarians will use their formidable political apparatuses, which have been developed over more than 30 years, to fight for control of the most populous nation in Africa. In Nigeria, voters are frequently bribed with gifts of money, food, or clothing to cast their ballots in favor of a certain candidate.
Two armored bank vehicles were seen approaching Tinubu’s house on the night of the most recent election in 2019. When asked what the vehicles were carrying, he responded to reporters, “If I have money to spend, if I like, I offer it to the people for free as long as it’s not to purchase votes.”
According to Hoffmann, Tinubu and Abubakar have developed extensive networks of political patronage. She claimed that both men were skilled at “creating and extending political networks through co-optation, through channeling and dispersing money, positions, and favors.”
Tinubu, 70, who resides in the wealthiest area of Lagos, claims that he amassed his wealth prior to entering politics by making wise investments and working as an accountant for firms like Deloitte LLP. In addition to co-founding a sizable logistics and oil services company that has had concessions at Nigerian ports, 75-year-old Abubakar, who divides his time between Nigeria and Dubai, spent 20 years working for the government’s customs department.
Buhari, an austere 80-year-old former general who maintains a herd of cattle at his ranch in the far north of Nigeria and once served as the nation’s military dictator, leads a drastically different lifestyle from theirs. He was elected in 2015 on the platform of eradicating the corruption that had grown during the previous administration.
While Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre in Abuja, said Buhari has “failed horribly,” the president claims to have made some progress in curbing corruption. However, he added, “the terrible levels of insecurity across the country and the surge in poverty” are likely to overshadow corruption in this election.
Ranking of Corruption
On Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, Nigeria had an all-time low ranking of 154 out of 180 nations. According to the Berlin-based watchdog, the failure to take action against people accused of wrongdoing has given the appearance of impunity and slowed the fight against corruption.
On June 8, Tinubu easily won the All Progressives Congress party’s primary. The most powerful politician in southwest Nigeria and a former two-term governor of Lagos state who was first elected in 1999, he hand-picked his three successors and has long been the target of accusations of breaching the law.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission had an open investigation into Tinubu as of last June, according to the agency’s head, Abdulrasheed Bawa, who did not explain what the probe was looking into at the time. When asked if the investigation was still ongoing, an EFCC spokeswoman remained silent.
In a current high court case in Nigeria, Tinubu is also charged of secretly managing the business that handles Lagos state taxes and is entitled to a 10% part of the money it brings in. While Tinubu served as governor, it received the contract.
In June 2021, the founder of the business filed a lawsuit against Tinubu and Alpha Beta Consulting LLP, claiming that the latter had been depriving him of his share of income for more than ten years and had transferred millions of dollars out in “suspicious monetary transfers.” A settlement outside of court is currently being discussed by ABC and the plaintiff.
The charges are “unsubstantiated,” a representative for Tinubu, who has not taken part in the negotiations, told Bloomberg in March.
From less than 15 billion naira when he started office to 83 billion naira (about $690 million at the time), the Lagos government’s revenue increased significantly under Tinubu’s leadership. It was about 420 billion naira ($1.1 billion) in 2020, more than three times the next-best performing asset class in the nation.
When Tinubu was a Nigerian senator for a brief period in 1993, the US government sued bank accounts in his name in Chicago for forfeiture on the grounds that there was “probable cause” to suspect they included heroin sales revenues. The investigation into a trafficking network involving Nigerian suppliers by the Internal Revenue Service and other authorities led to the case.
According to court documents, the IRS obtained warrants in January 1992 to seize roughly $2 million. According to the US government’s accusation, Tinubu had put more than $1.8 million into one of the accounts while residing in Chicago between 1989 and 1991 before moving large quantities to another bank. Tinubu reached a settlement in September 1993, agreeing to hand over $460,000 to the US government in exchange for the release of the remaining funds, although contesting the US government’s justification for targeting the accounts. Tinubu wasn’t indicted over the matter.
Millions to US
The nominee for the Peoples Democratic Party is Abubakar. He served as vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 and has run in each of the four elections thereafter. When Buhari was re-elected four years ago, Abubakar finished second. During that campaign, a US travel ban related to bribery charges was temporarily suspended because of Abubakar’s probability of winning, according to a person familiar with the situation.
One of Abubakar’s wives allegedly assisted her husband in bringing more than $40 million in “suspect funds” into the US while he was vice president of Nigeria, including at least $1.7 million in bribes from Siemens AG, according to a report issued in 2010 by the US Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Abubakar and his former wife denied any wrong doing.
William Jefferson, a former US representative, received a 13-year prison term in 2009 for accepting bribes from American businesses looking to do business in Ghana and Nigeria. According to the Louisiana congressman’s indictment, Jefferson informed a cooperating witness in July 2005 that then-Vice President Abubakar had also consented to receive a bribe in exchange for his help. Abubakar has previously denied the accusations, claiming he had no acquaintance with Jefferson on either a personal or professional level.
When the EFCC deemed Abubakar unsuitable to hold public office and a Nigerian Senate panel recommended his prosecution for allegedly misusing government funds, Abubakar’s aspirations of succeeding President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007 were dashed. Abubakar refuted the accusations and claimed that he was a target of political persecution. According to Hoffmann, both candidates will concentrate on topics other than corruption while running for office. They are aware that it doesn’t fit with their political persona, she said. According to Hoffmann, both candidates will concentrate on topics other than corruption while running for office. They are aware that it doesn’t fit with their political persona, she said.
