On May 29, Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure as president of Nigeria would come to an end, having served two terms leading Africa’s most populous country. 

After three failed attempts to be president, he was elected in 2015 after swaying millions of voters on the promise that he’ll fight corruption, grow the economy and secure the country. 

Back in the 1980s, during his twenty-month stint as a military dictator, Mr Buhari had led a ‘War Against Indiscipline’ and cultivated the image of an incorruptible disciplinarian. 

This profile of someone with zero tolerance for corruption was his selling point in 2015 and was critical in making him the first Nigerian opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent president. He would go on to win re-election in 2019. 

Eight years later, as Nigerians count down to the end of his regime, Peoples Gazette examines how well Mr Buhari fared in his fight against corruption. This paper found that Mr Buhari’s government was almost promptly consumed by the sceptre of endemic corruption and political avarice that he set out to combat in the first place.

Early voyage in sea of corruption

Upon assumption of office, Mr Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo made a populist announcement that included a press release about the declaration of his assets and up to 50 per cent cut in their monthly salaries. Even though the assets declaration lacked transparency and fell behind the standard set by former President Umaru Yar’Adua in such public disclosures, the press statement from Mr Buhari and his vice was nonetheless accepted by Nigerians as a good way to start, given that his immediate predecessor Goodluck Jonathan did not declare his asset publicly.

Similarly, Messrs Buhari and Osinbajo’s claim that they reduced their salaries by half could not be verified by the Nigerian people since their payslips have not been made public. Even then, both leaders already enjoy generous lifestyles on public funds, including luxury mansions, about five private jets between them, feeding, and retreats, among others.

Therefore, while they live large on public funds and no evidence exists in the public domain that they actually took a pay cut, they still earned some public relations credits for saying they reduced their salaries and declared their assets to Nigerians.

The government also announced weeks after its inauguration that it would expand the treasury single account (TSA) across all government agencies. The policy was launched by the preceding Jonathan administration but was being implemented in phases across a labyrinth web of federal ministries, departments and agencies.

Still, lawmakers soon discovered that the Buhari government had been lying to the Nigerian people that TSA covered all government agencies. It was soon discovered that the Nigerian National Oil Corporation, NNPC, was not hooked up to the TSA and its personnel had isolated and looted over $150 million within the first weeks of Mr Buhari’s government. The president took no action about the corruption.

The so-called whistleblower policy, Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) and Open Treasury Portal were also adopted by the Buhari regime to further combat corruption, but some of the policies, especially the whistleblower procedure, have since collapsed within eight years, while those still active, like the open treasury website, have seen a lacklustre implementation.

The regime said it wanted to use the policies to improve transparency and accountability in public service, with the whistleblowing policy going further to co-opt the support of the citizenry during its functioning days. 

The whistleblowing procedure, introduced through the Federal Ministry of Finance in 2016, encourages Nigerians to voluntarily disclose information about fraud, bribery, and other financial misconduct, with between 2.5 to five per cent reward of the recovered loot promised to the whistleblower.

By June 2017, a year after the policy was first introduced, over 3,000 tips were said to have been received by the regime from whistleblowers. Then in September 2020, over N700 billion were reported to have been recouped through information provided by whistleblowers, the administration said.

Popular among recoveries with the help of a whistleblower is the infamous #IkoyiGate scandal in which $43.5 million, £27,800 and N23.2 million were recovered. It was reported that the government paid the whistleblower about N421 million.

The regime also said that by 2020, it had already saved an average of N45 billion monthly from the implementation of the TSA and the detection of 54,000 fraudulent payroll entries on the federal IPPIS platform. 

Notwithstanding the successes touted by the Buhari regime as fall-outs from these policies, a recent survey by the Foundation for Environmental Rights Advocacy and Development said that regime officials lack the political will to fight corruption. 

Implementation mishaps 

Despite the attempt at transparency and accountability, some policies, such as the popular whistleblower policy, are yet to be fully adopted by Nigerians and several government MDAs. 

The African Centre for Media and Information Literacy notes that three out of every four whistleblowers do not report cases of looted funds due to nepotism in the regime, fear of victimisation and lack of knowledge on the kind of information and appropriate channel to report to.

The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) states in a report that 204 MDAs don’t have whistleblowing policies.

To forestall these shortfalls in policy implementation, Agora Policy, an Abuja-based think-tank, called for laws to strengthen the legality and efficacy of the policies and for their continuation by successive governments.

Botched anti-corruption drive

A year into his regime, President Buhari’s war on corruption was already froth with controversy. Sometime in 2016, operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) raided senior judges’ homes over allegations of corruption by the regime. 

The operation by the secret police in at least six states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) elicited mixed reactions, with supporters of the regime applauding the raid. Others, including lawyers and rights groups, condemned it as an abuse of the judges’ rights. 

The regime’s war on corruption would continue on a controversial slope with the imprisonment of the former governors of Taraba (Jolly Nyame) and Plateau (Joshua Dariye); their eventual pardon by the same regime as well as the release of another former governor, Orji Kalu of Abia, by the courts over corruption charges. 

Shortly after videos showing Governor Umar Ganduje receiving bribes from a contractor were released online in October 2018, Mr Buhari defended his Kano ally, suggesting the videos were doctored. He later went on to campaign for Mr Ganduje, who was reelected in the key northern state in 2019.

Anti-corruption groups have accused appointees of Mr Buhari of perpetuating the worst kind of corruption. A fallout of the president’s nepotism has been the issue of appointees scuttling corruption cases involving prominent people.

High-profile corruption cases reportedly watered down by Abubakar Malami, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, include one involving former NFF president Amaju Pinnick and others over mismanagement of a $9.5 million FIFA grant; former senate president Bukola Saraki for forging senate rules to elect principal officers of the senate.

Mr Malami has been said to water down top corruption cases by exercising his powers under Section 174 of the 1999 constitution to intervene and terminate cases at any time. However, he has since denied meddling in corruption cases.

Aside from appointees of the president, anti-corruption agencies are also accused of losing grip on the war on corruption or that they were never interested in the fight against corruption in the first place. 

Ibrahim Magu, the erstwhile acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was arrested in 2020 for corruption and investigated by a secret panel set up by the AGF, whose findings were never made public. Instead, Mr Magu got promoted days before he retired from the Nigerian police.

In 2022, the EFCC lost six major corruption cases in various court jurisdictions. Top on the list was the N6.3 billion case against ex-governor Jang of Plateau State; the grass-cutting scandal involving former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal; and the N450 million fraud case involving former science and technology minister Abdu Buama.

Others included a $9.8 million money laundering case involving Andrew Yakubu, a former Group Managing Director of the NNPC; N715 million corruption case involving Kabiru Turaki, a former Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs; and N36 billion fraud case involving a former Jigawa governor Saminu Turaki.

Since he was set free by the Supreme Court, the EFCC has struggled to retry Mr Kalu. Before that, the senator from Abia was convicted by a lower court for stealing his state treasury as governor. 

The Buhari regime also failed to extradite Diezani Alison-Madueke to face corruption charges in Nigeria. The former petroleum minister had fled the country to the United Kingdom following the re-election defeat of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.

Mrs Alison-Madueke is being investigated for money laundering in the UK. At the same time, the EFCC has named her in several corruption charges in Nigeria and seized her properties worth billions of naira.

In a letter to Mr Buhari, the anti-corruption group HEDA listed 25 top corruption cases linked with stolen or mismanaged funds worth over N900 billion that his regime had failed to resolve.

Points earned

The regime made few successes with the cases involving Abdulrasheed Maina, former head of the Pension Task Force and former senator Farouq Lawan; both were jailed over varying degrees of money laundering and bribery, respectively.

Similarly, Okoi Obono-Obla, chairman of the now-defunct Special Presidential Investigation Panel (SPIP), was arrested in 2019 for corruption and has since been taken to court to face criminal charges.

EFCC chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa stated in December that the commission recorded 3,615 convictions in 2022. He, however, admitted that half of those convictions involved cybercrime. 

In a 2021 report, the pro-democracy group, Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), said that a ‘major win’ in the fight against corruption was when high-ranking officials accused of graft are prosecuted and jailed, not the commission’s usual cherry-picking of low-hanging cases involving cybercriminals.

Buhari’s oil corruption 

Oil theft under President Buhari, who doubled as minister of petroleum for the eight years of his presidency, was largely unchecked and made worse by corruption in the sector.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the oil sector contributed 5.66 per cent of the country’s GDP in the third quarter of 2022 before falling to 4.34 per cent the following quarter. 

While regime officials have attempted to spin the decline in the ratio of oil revenue to the country’s GDP as a result of the plan to diversify the economy, experts instead believe that it’s due to oil theft, subsidy, oil production shortages and the relocation of International Oil Companies (IOCs).

“When you talk about GDP, you are also talking about the value of productivity in the economy: the value of Oil and gas productivity in the economy has largely dropped. It used to be closer to 10 per cent at some point and it’s now about like 5 or 6 per cent and that is largely due to oil thieves, the exit of oil companies, pipeline corrosion and old spills,” said Kelechukwu Ogu, business analyst with SBM intelligence.

The regime has tried to curtail theft by launching an intelligence-driven maritime security platform named the “Falcon Eye System”, a cutting-edge real-time maritime intelligence initiative. However, statistics show that oil theft has a lengthy history of harming the Nigerian economy.

In February, Babagana Monguno, the president’s security advisor, said that the regime had prevented the theft of more than three million barrels of crude oil between 2018 and 2023.

Mr Monguno also noted that several of the IOCs that were once operating in the country had exited due to repeated attacks on oil-producing facilities, claiming that this action resulted in the loss of revenue.

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Initiative (NEITI) estimates that the economy lost more than $3.5 billion in revenue in 2018, accounting for 10 per cent of the country’s foreign reserves.

Also, in 2019, the NNPC, known now as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, reported that $159 billion was lost to oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

Due to the activities of oil thieves outside the shores of Nigeria in 2021, the country reportedly incurred an estimated monthly revenue loss of $1.9 billion. 

Last year, the country’s oil production figure also fell, partly due to the threat of crude oil theft along pipelines. Between January and July of 2022, Nigeria lost an average of 437,000 barrels of crude oil worth $10 billion or N4.3 trillion (at N430 to a dollar), affecting the country’s revenue.

The theft of crude has made it difficult to ascertain the amount of oil consumed daily by Nigerians. In 2022, ex-senate president Bukola Saraki disputed claims by the Buhari regime that the country consumes over 70 million litres of fuel each day.

In 2018, Mr Buhari wrote the National Assembly, saying he had withdrawn over $496 million from the Nigerian excess crude account and sent the funds to the United States to procure Tucano reconnaissance jets for the Nigerian military’s battle against insecurity.

Mr Buhari said the money was sent based on anticipatory approval of the parliament, which lawmakers said was a violation of the Constitution since no such arrangement existed under Nigeria’s appropriation laws. While six Tucano aircraft were supplied to the Nigerian Air Force, there was no evidence the government paid $496 million to procure them from the U.S. Department of Defence, with military analysts putting the estimate as less than half the money taken by Mr Buhari.

Relooting loot

The passage of the Proceeds of Crime Act was to help with recovery of assets from politicians. However, there’s been a lack of transparency and repeated allegations of mismanagement of these seized assets.

In January, the AGF announced that N181.816 billion was recovered between 2021 and 2023 from forfeited assets and stolen funds across different jurisdictions.

Mr Malami said some of the recovered funds were used to fund the controversial Social Investment Programmes (SIPs) and to finance critical infrastructures, including the Abuja – Kano Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, and the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway.

The AGF established the Asset Tracing, Recovery, and Management Regulations in 2019 and the inter-ministerial committee on forfeited assets in 2020 to investigate illegally acquired assets and proceeds of crime, as well as take custody of and manage forfeited assets.

In 2022, a Federal High Court in Lagos had, in a suit filed by HEDA challenging the AGF’s powers, reverted the responsibility of disposing forfeited assets from the office of the AGF to the recovering agencies.

Ladidi Mohammed, the head of the asset recovery and management unit under the Ministry of Justice, was grilled by the EFCC over allegations of fraud involving the sale of billions of recovered assets.

The ICPC and EFCC have started selling off forfeited assets but have yet to account for the amount recovered, the number of sold properties, and whether the money realised from the sales had been sent to the accounts created for the proceeds of crime and other confiscated assets.

When asked about the status of the recovered assets, a spokesperson for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, said the agency would make a formal disclosure as soon as its findings were complete. 

Passing legacy of corruption 

Responding to a Bloomberg question on June 21, 2022, Mr Buhari claimed he was leaving Nigeria far better than he met it. He said corruption was less hidden under his regime because “Nigerians feel empowered” to report corrupt practices without fear. 

At an anti-corruption forum by the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) and other anti-graft agencies in July 2022 in Abuja, Mr Buhari said he was leaving office in 2023 with the reputation of an anti-corruption crusader, vowing to “do my best in or out of office to get rid of corruption in Nigeria and Africa”. 

But there are no statistics to back up his claims that Nigeria was less corrupt under his regime. 

Since Mr Buhari became president in 2015, Nigeria’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking has worsened, except for 2022, when it improved marginally to 150th out of 180 countries, an inconsequential change slide from 154th in 2021.

The U.S. 2021 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, described the scale of corruption under Mr Buhari as “massive, widespread and pervasive,” attributing this to a lack of application of relevant laws against corrupt practices among officials in his regime. 

A 2019 study on ‘Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends’ by the National Bureau of Statistics, conducted with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, recorded an increase in the number of bribery cases from 2016 to 2019.

Civil society organisations such as the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) have maintained that corruption under the Buhari regime has remained massive, systematic and overwhelming.

Political scholar Jibrin Ibrahim has described Mr Buhari as wallowing in his delusion for thinking that he made Nigeria less corrupt, accusing him of running the most corrupt regime in the country’s history.