- To withhold looted funds is another form of looting
More than 20 years after the demise of Nigeria’s maximum ruler and indeed maximum kleptocrat, General Sani Abacha, his odious deeds have not stopped oozing. Recorded to have stolen more than $5 billion during his reign, repatriation of some of the loot salted away in secret vaults across developed world has proved quite arduous.
The latest instalment in the long-drawn drama of what is now globally known as ‘Abacha loot’ is $321 million currently held in Switzerland. The fund was originally stashed in Luxembourg from where it was frozen and repatriated to Switzerland. But the Swiss authorities said recently that there is no hope that the fund would be handed in anytime soon.
According to the Deputy Head of Mission, Swiss Embassy in Nigeria, Daniel Cavegn, the World Bank has placed certain conditions to be met by the Nigerian government before the fund is repatriated. The terms include an assurance that there would be transparency and accountability in its disbursal.
The Nigerian government is also required to submit a detailed list of projects to be executed with the funds as well as subject herself to strict monitoring of the use of the fund by the World Bank. “The Swiss forfeiture order provides for a return of $321 million to Nigeria and foresees a monitoring of the use of the funds by the World Bank.
“From the Swiss side, we are committed to begin restitution of the money to Nigeria as soon as possible; we will proceed to a bilateral agreement for the restitution which is the legal basis for the transfer of the money,” Cavegn told a national newspaper last weekend.
Going by the envoy’s comments, it would appear that the Federal Government may well be delaying the transaction as a letter of intent was signed between the Minister of Justice and the Swiss foreign minister in Abuja about six months ago. Since then, Nigeria has not been able to furnish the World Bank with details of proposed projects as well as give assurances on the monitoring protocol.
While we urge the Federal Government to do all that is necessary and promptly too, to retrieve the cash and all other looted funds wherever they may be, we condemn the hypocrisy of the Western world over the wanton pillage and despoliation of the economy of developing countries. Yes, it is true, the age-old African proverb which suggests that if there was no crack in the wall, the lizard would never find its way into it.
If African leaders are not engrossed in the folly of looting and shipping their country’s meagre resources abroad, their countries would never suffer the indignities of being presented with conditionalities before proven and ascertained loot are repatriated.
Though Nigeria’s leaders have erred in the purloin of their country’s common wealth, it is also obtuse, to say the least, that the country that warehoused stolen funds for decades and made huge profit and capital by it would turn round and act sanctimoniously. As has been suggested, stolen monies from politically exposed people still find their ways to the Western World even now.
The World Bank is expected to have initiated iron-tight measures that make it nigh impossible for monies from poor countries to end up in the developed world. And if such funds end up in the vaults of the West, efforts should be made to return such monies within no more than 90 days. It is equally criminal and unconscionable of the developed world to make profit from funds stolen from wretched and blighted parts of the world where citizens are dying from malnutrition and common diseases.
Though it is claimed that the Swiss government had previously repatriated more than $700 million of Abacha loot to Nigeria, and which was apparently mismanaged by previous governments, it must be stated that the current government urgently needs an injection of foreign exchange to help reflate the country’s withering economy and alleviate the sufferings of the people.
We therefore demand that this fund in Switzerland and all others criminally held in Britain, USA and other European countries should be released pronto. There must be something criminal in withholding a stolen property, isn’t there?
