After
being elected in 2015, president Muhammadu Buhari was expected to lead strict
anti-corruption probes in office in a bid to clean up Nigeria’s civil service,
government offices and bad image
Depending on who
you ask, that’s not been the case. While Buhari’s administration soon detained
high-profile officials from his predecessor’s government—over misappropriation
of $2.1 billion fund for arms to
combat Boko Haram—a criticism that’s been laid against the president is that
his anti-corruption stance has been one-sided with no members of his party, or
administration, detained.
But that’s
changed. Yesterday (Oct. 30), the presidency sacked Babachir
David Lawal, secretary to the government of the federation and Nigeria’s most
senior civil servant as well as Ayo Oke, director general of Nigeria’s National
Intelligence Agency (NIA). Both men had been suspended since April.
Lawal was implicated in findings of a $8m fraud scandal by
Nigeria’s Senate last December. The money was meant for rebuilding Nigeria’s
northeast after a decade of devastation by terrorist sect, Boko Haram. For his
part, Oke was suspended following controversy around a $43 million cash haul find by
Nigeria’s anti-graft agency. In the wake of the find, the NIA made a claim for
the money, causing scrutiny of the agency’s finances.
The sackings come
after weeks of pressure by civil society groups for the president to act on
findings of the panel set up to investigate both men.
Nigeria’s
corruption problems are globally famed and recently became well-documented. In
August, Nigeria’s statistics bureau released its first ever large-scale report
on corruption in the country and, predictably,the findings were grim:
Nearly a third of Nigerian adults who had contact with local public officials
in the period under review reported cases where bribes were solicited or paid.
The bureau also estimated the total amount of bribes paid to public officials
amount to $4.6 billion in purchasing power parity terms—around 39% of Nigeria’s
federal and state budgets for education in 2016.
Source: Quartz Africa
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