"Corruption" fights back
It's not just in Nigeria that efforts to eliminate corruption are failing. It seems that everyone in Nigeria agrees that an electrical power infrastructure is necessary for future development, but the billions of naria spent so far have only poured some foundations and bought equipment that now sits is storage. Who is to blame? Where did the money go? The people with the money don't want anyone to find out.Battle to Halt Graft Scourge in Africa Ebbs
The fight against corruption in Africa’s most pivotal nations is faltering as public agencies investigating wrongdoing by powerful politicians have been undermined or disbanded and officials leading the charge have been dismissed, subjected to death threats and driven into exile.
“We are witnessing an era of major backtracking on the anticorruption drive,” said Daniel Kaufmann, an authority on corruption who works at the Brookings Institution. “And one of the most poignant illustrations is the fate of the few anticorruption commissions that have had courageous leadership. They’re either embattled or dead.”
Experts, prosecutors and watchdog groups say they fear that major setbacks to anticorruption efforts in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are weakening the resolve to root out graft, a stubborn scourge that saps money needed to combat poverty and disease in the world’s poorest region...In oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, where watchdog groups say efforts to combat corruption are backsliding, Nuhu Ribadu [above], who built a well-trained staff of investigators at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said he fled his homeland into self-imposed exile in England in December. Officials had sent Mr. Ribadu away to a training course a year earlier, soon after his agency charged a wealthy, politically connected former governor with trying to bribe officials on his staff with huge sacks stuffed with $15 million in $100 bills. Mr. Ribadu, who was dismissed from the police force last year, said he had received death threats and was fired upon in September by assailants.
“If you fight corruption, it fights you back,” he said...
Labels: corruption, Nigeria, politics, transparency
posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:43 AM
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