During his visit to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on Monday, the Swiss Ambassador to Nigeria, Hans Rudolf Hodel, disclosed to his host that Switzerland had traced another $370m in a Luxembourg account to the late Gen Sani Abacha. The Swiss government was not involved in the effort to repatriate the money, said the ambassador; it was being handled by Nigeria and the family of the former military head of state. No one knows exactly how much Gen Abacha stole, nor how much of the money traced to his family was legitimately acquired, as representatives of the family continue to implausibly argue. But by some conservative estimates, Gen Abacha stole more than $5bn from Nigeria between 1993 and 1998, making him one of the four most corrupt rulers in history. Less charitable analysts put the figure at more than double that estimate.
If the recent disclosure by Mr Hodel is considered scrupulously, the amount stolen by Gen Abacha put the dictator in contention for the post of the most corrupt former ruler in the world, not one of four. Interestingly, however, the former Nigerian head of state represents a remarkable paradox, a paradox that provides a disturbing window into the financial malfeasance of Nigerian rulers, especially in the past few years. But despite Gen Abacha’s terrifying stealing over a five-year period, some of it in direct cash transfers in excess of $1.4bn, the Nigerian economy actually grew and was on solid footing notwithstanding a regime of sanctions imposed on Nigeria in response to Gen Abacha’s human rights violations.
Oil price per barrel under Gen Abacha’s five-year rule was an average of $15, not the over $50 it is now, nor the over $100 it was for many years. External reserve under him, particularly between 1993 and 1997, also grew from less than half a billion dollars to about $10bn. Inflation fell to less than nine percent, and external debt also reduced from $36bn to $27bn. Nigeria’s current economic distress, despite huge earnings from oil production, seems to give the impression that either Gen Abacha stole in moderation compared with what Nigerians have contended with in the past few years, or he was a better economic manager, or more puzzlingly, that his ministers and aides were perhaps more decent and patriotic.
Till today, no one in the outgoing Goodluck Jonathan government has offered convincing explanations as to why budgetary provisions for the so-called fuel subsidy grew so rapidly and so astonishingly that the spending simply became mind-bogglingly bizarre. In Nigeria, actual spending on fuel subsidy has always unfortunately been far in excess of budgetary provisions, implying that too many loopholes exist, and too many callous predators roam the corridors of power and the oil industry. In the last two years of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, spending on fuel subsidy never exceeded N190bn. For the three years or so that the late Umaru Yar’Adua governed Nigeria, fuel subsidy spending was less than N300bn per year until he began his protracted battle with illness, However, as his illness intensified in 2009, and though he tried to tinker with the subsidy menace, fuel subsidy spending rose to just a little over N400bn.
But between the time former president Yar’Adua peered into the grave, and when he actually died, and for much of 2010 when Dr Jonathan took office — in that 2010 alone — fuel subsidy spending rose to nearly N700bn, almost double. There were no rational economic explanations. By 2011, all hell was let loose, as fuel subsidy spending rose astronomically through the roof to hit a whopping N2.19trn, according to the government’s own reconciled accounts and House of Representatives probe. In both 2012 and 2013, the Jonathan government quit all pretences and spent well over one trillion each year for fuel subsidy, thereby exceeding budgetary provisions in both years. No one has satisfactorily explained the factors that accounted for such maddening rush to financial suicide. For 2015 budget, it is curiously reported that no provision has been made for fuel subsidy by the National Assembly.
In the worst of Gen Abacha years, the kind of financial recklessness seen under Dr Jonathan was never experienced. The Buhari government, it is almost certain, will review the financial and policy maladies of the past few years. What is, however, worrisome in the light of Mr Hodel’s disclosure of additional Abacha loot stashed away in many squirrel accounts abroad is the continuing indifference of Nigerians and their governments to the grave and frustrating topic of Abacha’s larcenous rule. Indeed, sadly, Nigeria has been reduced to the indignity of negotiating with its traducers and predators who stole or facilitated the stealing of its resources. Chief Obasanjo negotiated with the Abacha family for a fraction of the stolen money to be repatriated, and there were even reports of some of the returned money being looted again. Subsequent governments, including the Jonathan presidency, also negotiated with the Abacha family, sometimes unsuccessfully, but often slowly.
To the rest of the world, Nigerians have become one of the most inscrutable people ever. To Nigerians themselves, both they and their governments can’t seem to understand why they behave the way they do. Despite Gen Abacha’s many sins, some of them done in execrable openness, his name still adorns many national monuments. A stadium and hospital are named after him somewhere in the Northeast. In the federal capital Abuja, roads are also named after him, in addition to one highly visible military barracks. Yet, nothing can assuage the hurt and rage Nigerians feel about the continuing findings relating to Gen Abacha’s financial malfeasances like exhuming his corpse, breathing life into it, subjecting him to the harshest trial possible, and punishing him slowly and malignantly in the same way he disgraced and punished the country he ruled for five dishonourable years.
Dr Jonathan, considering how he permitted a street in Abuja to be named after him while he is still in office, lacks the will and the moral high ground to banish Gen Abacha from the nation’s honours roll. His successor should assume that onerous responsibility. Gen Abacha was Kanuri; but neither Yobe nor Borno should have any monument named after him. The late strongman was born and bred in Kano; but his name should also be banished from that historically influential African city of commerce. But if these states, for sentimental reasons, will continue to honour Gen Abacha’s despicable name, let the federal government at least have the courage to erase his name from all federal monuments in Abuja. His name is to Nigeria a constant embarrassment and mockery. Whenever a discovery is made concerning one illegal foreign account or the other linked to the name of the late former dictator, it is a humiliating reminder that, by continuing to honour him, Nigeria advertises its total lack of shame, scruple and modesty.
In total, Africa lost about $850bn between 1970 and 2008, the report said. An estimated $217.7bn was illegally transferred out of Nigeria over that period, while Egypt lost $105.2bn and South Africa more than $81.8bn.
