Nigeria launched an anti-corruption drive on Friday when five former government officials charged with accepting bribes appeared in court for a test case of the country’s desire to clean up its image.
One of the judges did not turn up and the trial was postponed. But this nevertheless signalled a new determination by President Olusegun Obasanjo to tackle graft on the same day he visited London for Commonwealth talks.
A Nigerian man intercepted at Heathrow airport last September carrying $200 000 in a briefcase triggered the investigation, which has snared three former cabinet ministers and an official allegedly working for the French electronics giant Sagem.
If convicted the defendants, who deny the charges, will be the first high-profile politicians punished for corruption since Africa’s most populous country reverted to democracy in 1999.
They are accused of accepting bribes totalling more than $one-million to award a $214-million contract to Sagem in 2001 to supply all adult citizens, an estimated 60-million people, with modern national identity cards including fingerprints. Two former interior ministers who oversaw the contract, Sunday Afolabi and Mohammed Shatta, and a former labour minister, Hussaini Akwanga, were arrested last year, along with two other former officials. Accused of pocketing between $30 000 and $500 000 each, they face 16 corruption-related charges.
A sixth man alleged to be an agent of the French company, Niyi Adelagun, appeared with the five in court in Abuja yesterday for the start of the trial. The hearing was postponed until February 25 because one of the judges was said to be busy dealing with a separate case of electoral fraud.
Chris Agidi — the man intercepted at Heathrow allegedly on his way to deposit payoffs in foreign banks, who is a former director of the department for civic registration — has been detained but not charged. A Sagem spokesperson declined to comment.
The trial’s delay dismayed observers. ”There is a lot of scepticism about the seriousness of the prosecution, because similar investigations in the past have been swept under the carpet,” said Lilian Ekeanyanwu of the campaign group Zero Corruption Coalition. Nigerian commentators have seized on the case as an example of the dishonesy that consistently puts Nigerian second from the bottom in a league table of 133 countries compiled by Transparency International.
The joke goes that Nigeria bribed the corruption watchdog to rank Bangladesh lower.
Brutal and kleptocratic military rule impoverished what should have been an oil-rich, dynamic economy, prompting President Obasanjo to promise a war against the ”cancer” of corruption when he was elected in 1999. But until now senior members of his People’s Democratic Party behaved with impunity when they allegedly accepted bribes and looted state assets such as Nigeria Airways. No senior official was convicted of graft. Legislators reportedly had to be bribed to pass an anti-corruption law.
The Sagem case demonstrated the government’s resolve that there would be no hiding place for corruption in Nigeria, the information minister, Chukwuemeka Chikelu, told Associated Press. But Ishola Williams, who represents Transparency International in Nigeria, said Mr Obasanjo had erred by waiting until his re-election last year. ”If he had started with such trials in his first term, the perception of Nigeria would have changed.”
Obasanjo, who was in London yesterday for talks with Don McKinnon, secretary general of the Commonwealth, was accused of ballot fraud in his re-election.
The west muted criticism on the grounds that he would probably have won without cheating.
Obasanjo is a southern Christian, and his support among northern Muslims has ebbed, partly because some view the anti-corruption drive as a tool to trip up opponents of the ruling party.
Arresting three former ministers has raised the stakes and could fuel growing resentment against the president, said the newsletter Africa Confidential, and could even trigger a military coup. -Guardian Unlimited Â