A confirmation of the constant pillaging of our country’s treasury by its elite came from the African Union with its recent report that an estimated $217.7 billion worth of illicit transfers were made out of Nigeria between 1970 and 2008. By 2010, $60 billion was being illegally siphoned out of Africa annually, with Nigeria accounting for over 68 per cent of the figure, said the report.
The money was stolen through official corruption, money-laundering, contract scams, tax evasion, trade under-invoicing and illegal transfers by multinational companies.
The AU Heads of State and Government adopted the report, which was prepared by a panel chaired by Thabo Mbeki, a former president of South Africa, at their summit in Addis Ababa on February 1. The verdict corroborates earlier misgivings by other global watchdogs on Nigeria’s economy such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Global Financial Integrity, a United States-based group. The GFI, for instance, using World Bank and IMF data, said in its own report that $129 billion was siphoned from Nigeria, and laundered offshore, between 2000 and 2009.
Apparently, these findings are indices of bad governance and unaccountable leadership. Apart from Nigeria, Egypt, with its $105.2 billion, South Africa, $81.8 billion, and Morocco’s $33.7 billion were among the top 10 countries in Africa with the worst cases of this financial heist between 1970 and 2008. Mostly affected are countries with extractive and natural resources-based economies. Disturbed by increasing revenue losses, which undermine the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, the AU had set up the Mbeki team to examine the scourge.
The MDGs, a United Nations initiative that promotes better life for humanity, enjoins leaders through purposeful governance, to focus on the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and achievement of universal primary education. Other goals are promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Sadly, Nigeria has not fared well in this programme because of unchecked looting of public funds by successive governments’ public officials. This explains why Nigeria has 756,000 under-five children deaths annually, according to the 2013 UNICEF report, just as The Economist magazine ranked Nigeria as the worst place for a child to be born in the same year.According to UNESCO, Nigeria has 10.5 million out-of-school children, the highest rate in the world two years ago. This has worsened with the heightened insurgency in the North-East region.
Besides the AU verdict, there are sufficient local pointers. The Nigeria Extractive Industry and Transparency Initiative periodically queries the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and its opaque management of the oil industry, which has led to the loss of billions of dollars. In NEITI’s report covering 2009 to 2011, it criticised the NNPC for not renewing the Memorandum of Understanding for Joint Venture Partnership with the international oil companies, which expired in 2008.
NEITI said, “Companies covered by the JVs still use expired MoU in their transactions with Nigeria, resulting in revenue loss of the difference between NNPC and the covered entities position of over $1.7 billion.”
Even more shocking are the N2.5 trillion fuel subsidy scandal of 2011, for which nobody has been jailed, and Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment Olusegun Aganga’s revelation in April 2013 that Nigeria lost N755 billion monthly to inaccurate measurement of exports. He spoke at the launching of the Legal Metrology web-portal of Weights and Measures Department of the ministry. Aganga said, “The implementation will eliminate the loss of N755.72 billion due to inaccurate measurements at billing points every month by Nigerians.”
Instructively, the Weights and Measures Act was enacted in 2004. Why it took the Federal Government nine years to put in place a mechanism to address this huge leakage exemplifies official criminal negligence or corruption. For years, the Weight and Measures Department of the ministry had waged a serious battle against forces in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, which erected a bulwark against the discharge of its statutory responsibility for no other reason, it is believed, than graft.
The illicit capital flight evokes once more, the critical question of our weak national institutions. Undoubtedly, much of these illegal transactions pass through our banks. It is not on record that any Nigerian bank has raised the alarm over huge suspicious cash movements. Yet, their operations are within the bounds of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
It was for such illicit financial dealings that the government set up the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission. Clearly, these anti-graft bodies have not lived up to expectation. The Federal Inland Revenue Service and Nigerian Customs Service too have to sit up. Many foreigners, goaded by the abuse of governance here, conduct their business without regard to our laws. They evade tax (import and export duties), inflate contracts and illegally exploit our unregulated mineral resources.
As the AU report stressed, redeeming the situation would require strong political will. Regrettably, this is in short supply here. But with a parliament responsive to national aspirations, Nigeria could arrest this drift. So too could an active civil society and a vibrant media collectively help in moulding a citizenry conscious of its public duty, to interrogate our system for the emergence of a new national order.
