Nigerian president hits back after Cameron gaffe

Nigerian president says corruption is not sole preserve of poor countries

Is Nigeria “fantastically corrupt”? These were the words David Cameron used glibly to describe the country when caught on camera speaking to Queen Elizabeth. “Yes,” replied President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, with a smile, at a later news conference ahead of this week’s anti-corruption summit in London.

Who knows what informed his smile? To hazard a guess, Mr Buhari was musing that he might not have become the first opposition leader in Nigerian history to unseat an incumbent in an election were it not for his country’s terrible record on corruption. His anti-corruption stance was his strongest suit. Almost alone among Nigeria’s leaders, he has a reputation for integrity.

He is also a star turn at Thursday’s summit. On the face of it, therefore, Mr Cameron committed a considerable diplomatic gaffe. An official from the immediate past administration of Goodluck Jonathan, who presided over the mismanagement of tens of billions in dollars in windfall oil revenues, said the whiff of hypocrisy was such that in his day the Nigerian delegation might have turned around and left. Mr Cameron should be focusing his attention closer to the UK and its satellite tax havens, where oceans of dirty money are harboured.

Privately, Mr Buhari’s delegation has been more gracious. They recognise the scale of the problem they face and the challenges of combating it.

Nigeria

Buhari says corruption is not the sole preserve of poor countries

Britain and Nigeria have a poor record of co-operation on the issue to date. During a brief period in the past decade, Scotland Yard and Abuja collaborated. Mr Buhari’s administration wants stronger action still. It is looking for help — and is in discussions with Lloyds List — in tracking up to 230,000 barrels of oil stolen every day from its waters.

This is something previous administrations spoke about but failed to act on. More importantly, Nigeria wants faster assistance from the UK in tracing stolen assets, booking the culprits and repatriating the proceeds. Hundreds of millions of dollars embezzled by the late dictator Sani Abacha and his family remain frozen in western accounts two decades later.

It was easier when Mr Buhari was military head of state in the 1980s, he commented. Then the onus was on those suspected of corruption, who he locked up in their hundreds, to prove the legitimacy of their wealth.

Nigerian law compels the authorities to establish guilt first now. On leaky defence contracts they have made some progress. They have made much less on oil fraud, where the real money was taken. The lines between officially sanctioned and criminal activity in Nigeria’s oil industry had become increasingly blurred, making it difficult to prove when laws were broken.

Moreover, the challenges of combating corruption only start at source, as highlighted by Harry Potter actress, Emma Watson, who has featured in the Panama Papers in recent days. She says she hid behind British Virgin Island secrecy not to avoid tax but to shield her security when acquiring a London property. The same secrecy has shielded many a Nigerian thief.

To date there has been almost no scrutiny in the UK of beneficial ownership. No wonder so much dirty money winds up here.