A Nigerian state governor who had been charged in Britain with handling more than $3-million in stolen government funds has skipped bail and returned home, where he enjoys immunity from prosecution, officials said on Monday.
Bayelsa Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha’s escape will prove an embarrassment both for Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo and for Britain, as police from the two countries have been cooperating in a highly publicised joint anti-corruption campaign.
But in Yenagoa, capital of the governor’s oil-rich southern state, hundreds of supporters thronged the streets to celebrate his unexpected deliverance, witnesses said.
”The governor is back in Bayelsa and back at his desk, working. We woke up this morning and he was here … He said that God brought him here,” Bayelsa state information commissioner Oronto Douglas said by telephone from the Niger Delta city.
Alamieyeseigha was detained at London’s Heathrow airport on September 15 by Scotland Yard detectives. He was later charged with laundering a total of £1,815-million ($3,2-million) found in cash in his London home and two British bank accounts.
London magistrates freed him on bail on October 11 pending his trial, but he was ordered to post sureties totalling £1,25-million, surrender his passport, report to police every day and agree not to travel within 4,8km of any port or airport.
A spokesperson for the British embassy in Nigeria said: ”The governor has breached his bail conditions. It is likely therefore that the police will apply to a British court for an arrest warrant for use if he returns to the United Kingdom.”
Last month, Obasanjo’s justice minister urged the British court not to allow Alamieyeseigha to return to Nigeria — where governors cannot be charged with a criminal offence — and the president has cited the charges against him as evidence that his anti-corruption campaign is bearing fruit.
Alamieyeseigha is the second Nigerian governor to escape from under the noses of the British authorities. Last year, Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau state skipped bail and escaped back to Nigeria after being questioned over money-laundering by British detectives.
Nigeria’s 36 powerful state governors officially earn only 74 000 naira ($564) per month and are forbidden from owning foreign properties.
But most lead lavish lifestyles and many have expensive homes in foreign cities, especially London, where millions of dollars of embezzled state funds are laundered through British banks.
Obasanjo has been struggling to shake off Nigeria’s reputation as one of the world’s most deeply corrupt countries and his anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has been working with Scotland Yard to investigate senior Nigerian officials.
The president’s opponents have accused him of selectively targeting officials suspected of ties to his rival, Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, but the anti-graft campaign has won international praise and helped convince foreign creditors to grant Nigeria relief on its external debt.
Alamieyeseigha’s supporters also allege that their leader was singled out because he is a champion of the Ijaw people of southern Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta. Following his arrest, Ijaw militant groups threatened to kidnap or kill British oil workers. — Sapa-AFP