Post-London corruption summit: lessons for Africa and the West

Following the anti-corruption summit held in London on 12^th May, it is important to reflect on some of the broader lessons left in its aftermath. The week began inauspiciously for David Cameron, the British Prime Minister (PM), who provoked a firestorm of Nigerian and wider international condemnation. He was caught on video remarking that Nigeria and Afghanistan are “fantastically corrupt”. This sweeping claim reflected little of the nuance in Transparency International’s latest corruption ranking, in which Afghanistan was second from bottom, whilst Nigeria notched up 136th out of 168 countries. By downplaying the serious anti-corruption effort of Nigeria’s current government, Cameron provoked uncomfortable questions about the ambiguities in the West’s own anti-corruption stance.

The PM’s comment came just as Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, was headed to London as the star speaker at the London anti-corruption gathering. Undoubtedly jolted, Buhari must have reflected on Cameron’s interjection: here’s a welcome home-truth on Nigeria’s corruption challenge, albeit delivered by the leader of a country that whose financial system had played a facilitating role in the laundering of Nigeria’s stolen assets over the years.

Ultimately, proceedings at the summit were akin to a delicate tango between the two allies. Many observers sympathized with Buhari’s deliberately understated reaction, which sought not apologies for Mr Cameron’s comments but concrete help in repatriating Nigeria’s stolen wealth from the UK and other British-controlled jurisdictions. Buhari is after all the Nigerian leader who has himself candidly fingered corruption as the key menace likely to kill his country unless it is drastically curtailed. Mr Cameron for his part later struck a humbler tone, conceding that no country was perfect and that “nobody is lecturing anybody”. Undoubtedly, this episode presents important lessons for the both European and African leaders as they work together to tackle corruption.

First, it will be worthwhile to go beyond summitry, investing substantively in promoting the kind of global transparency that will support Africa’s development. During the London summit, Buhari reiterated his call for British help in returning looted funds, but the more important point to underscore to Mr Cameron and other leaders is that the worst anti-development form of corruption is hardly localized in Africa. David Cameron stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Buhari in their shared determination to not encourage corruption with impunity. Left unchecked, this undoubtedly damages society’s long-term prospects. Yet, efforts to stem the tide of resources being looted from some of the poorest places on earth have borne only mixed results. Key shifts are discernible in the actions of some western governments, including France and the US, where properties allegedly procured with proceeds of corruption by sitting African presidents and their associates have come under judicial scrutiny. Leaders of Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea have been touched by such investigations.

Nigeria itself continues to struggle valiantly as it seeks cooperation from the Swiss and others towards repatriating Nigeria’s billions corruptly stashed abroad. Too often, Western deterrence measures can seem choreographed, geared to addressed only a tip of the iceberg. Africa’s development is hobbled when diversion of public and other developmental resources fuel political and economic retrogression in whole societies. It is worse still when the industrial scale looting of funds ends up in the acquisition of assets abroad and foreign accounts. Here though, the UK has acquitted itself well in recent years, helping Nigeria prosecute officials who spirited funds abroad, from Diepriye Alameseigha through Joshua Dariye to James Ibori.

Second, developed countries can sometimes succumb to cynical obfuscation when geopolitical considerations and narrow national economic interests are at stake. The global campaign to promote transparency seem badly circumscribed as a result. Only particular types of corruption are given serious international attention, informed by the narrow reading of national interests as well as the balance of geopolitical influence. For example, the sometimes equivocal stance of some Western governments in the debate on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has long riled activists in Africa, many of whom struggle to understand why Washington, Berlin and London have not devoted more muscular effort to addressing IFFs and the opaqueness around the beneficial ownership of assets. Africa alone lost more than $854 billion to illicit outflows between 1970 and 2008, with Nigeria accounting for the biggest share of $89.5 billion. Many of the so-called offshore tax havens which act in ways detrimental to Africa’s development interests are British-controlled or British Dependent overseas territories, including the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and others.

Rather than dealing with these head-on, as David Cameron proposed during the UK’s Presidency of the G8 in 2013, much obfuscation prevails. The initially strong resolutions on these issues proposed by PM Cameron were significantly watered down in the final summit outcome, apparently on the strength of opposition mounted by some of the British Overseas Territories. Campaigners wonder why the question of IFFs and other misdemeanors are not entrusted to the UN, but rather left to the club of advanced western countries represented within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). And instead of prioritising IFFs and the much vexed question of beneficial ownership, the western focus has been disproportionately on the narrower issue of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), which directly affects the potential tax takes of treasuries in the developed economies. Britain and others’ commitment at the summit to establish registers for beneficial ownership is salutary.

Third, extant official rhetoric reflects little of the intricately woven web that connect corruption and other illicit activities across geographies, and the equally shared responsibility and joint action that this implies. Corruption is not unique to developing countries. The description of a brash, “Nigerian-style” corruption is a well-worn cliché in international news coverages of the country, which Mr Cameron’s was most likely playing to in his comment. Even then, Nigeria and its African peers featured only as a mere footnote in the recently leaked Panama Papers. Outside Africa too, corruption can be pervasive and endemic to electioneering campaigns and the broader political system of western democracies including in France, and is also evident in the way that some western businesses have long operated in Africa.

In some Western countries, it is not unusual for politicians to avoid public scrutiny by awarding lucrative contracts to their close business associates, along with stealth and routine circumvention of established procurement rules. Some tactics employed by US politicians are also not dissimilar to the constituency or “pork barrel” projects recently trimmed down from an earlier iteration of Nigeria’s draft 2016 budget. These have oftentimes provided a backdoor route to siphon public funds into opaque schemes. Even then, the crucial lesson for African policymakers to take home is that in the US, France and much of the advanced democracies, regardless of the chicaneries of corrupt elites, earmarked public infrastructure projects often get delivered. That’s a far cry from the outright looting that pervades political life in swathes of Africa. In truth, few who have stolen anything substantial in Africa have gotten away with it without major western accomplices.

Mr Buhari is undoubtedly one of the few African leaders that can confidently tout their anti-corruption credential. He should continue to impel Mr Cameron and their co-summiteers towards both the principles and practice of mutual accountability, joint responsibility and collective commitment needed to comprehensively address corruption. Unless they lead on addressing a broader-ranging set of transparency challenges, their collective anti-corruption effort will come to naught. This includes IFFs and beneficial ownership, BEPS and tax transparency, expanded rules on disclosure, and the standardization of approaches to procurement and transfer-pricing, among others. For Nigeria and the UK, they need to engage ever more closely on building capacities, formalizing modalities and strengthening institutions for mutual assistance on anti-corruption and wider illicit flows. The proposed anti-corruption agency to be based in London is a welcome development here. If both countries manage through their bilateral dialogue to rebuilt the anti-corruption struggle into a more inclusive, objective coalition, that could help lay the necessary foundational blocks for a solid north-south agreement on broader transparency issues.

 

Ola Bello