Dear Sir,
Your editorial of March 25, 2020 refers. It made the point that the returned Ibori loot belongs to the Delta state government and that it should be “deployed to educating Delta children” through the establishment of an “independent Education Trust Fund to give local and international scholarships to brilliant Delta state students.”
While I have no problem with the opinion expressed in the editorial, I wish to draw attention to at least one factual error and one wrong assumption in the editorial. Journalism, it is often said, is a first draft of history. Even though it is history written in a hurry, we owe it to the society to try to get all the available facts correctly and thoroughly understand the nuances involved in a story.
The editorial made reference to the British government having returned the loot of £4.2 million (about N2.2 billion) to Nigeria. This is not accurate. The British and Nigerian governments only signed an agreement for the return of the loot. There is nowhere where it was stated the loot has already been returned to Nigeria as suggested by the editorial. Besides, the £4.2 million is just the first part of Ibori’s loot the UK has agreed to return to Nigeria. Last year, UK prosecutors also asked a judge for a confiscation order against Ibori of £117.7 million ($163.8 million), a Bentley car and a Bombardier Challenger jet valued at £17 million. Based on the agreement reached, Nigeria will be expecting the repatriation of that money too when the judge eventually makes the order.
The editorial also categorically referred to the £4.2 million as “Delta State money, which is what the returned Ibori loot is…” This is also technically not correct. True, the money was stolen from Delta state. But after convicting Ibori for money laundering, the money is now proceeds of crime – which by UK law is to be confiscated and “funnelled back into the relevant police force so as to aid in future crime prevention”. Such assets are usually split between the police, the Crown Prosecution and the Home Office.
So, the money does not belong to Delta state. It belongs to the government of the United Kingdom. The UK is only returning the funds to Nigeria purely out of benevolence and neither is Nigeria nor the Delta state government entitled to the money. Like it does in the allocation of its aid money therefore, the UK government is perfectly within its rights to decide how the money it is returning to Nigeria must be used – and in this case, it signed an agreement with the Nigerian government to use the funds for infrastructure projects, including the Lagos to Ibadan Expressway, the Abuja to Kano road and the second Niger Bridge.
It appears the House of Representatives, the Delta state government and most Nigerians furiously arguing for the return of the money to Delta state do not get the nuance here. Nigeria is not at liberty to decide what exactly to do with the money. It must abide strictly by the agreement signed with the UK government.
And this is completely different from the Abacha loot and others returned to Nigeria. Those have not gone through the gamut of the courts like the Ibori loot has. The Ibori loots are now proceeds of crime and legally belong to the UK. The agitations and protestations by the Delta state government, many supposed legal luminaries, the Nigerian House of Representatives and many Nigerians, if successful, will only complicate and even jeopardise the future returns of such proceeds of crimes to Nigeria. We cannot eat our cake and have it. We ought to institute a system of accountability to stop the pillaging of our resources by elected and appointed government officials. We cannot continue to rely on others to fight corruption for us.
Christopher Akor writes from Tuscaloosa, Alabama
