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Is Buhari’s Anti-­Corruption Drive Chilling The Nigerian Economy?

Is Buhari’s Anti-­Corruption Drive Chilling The Nigerian Economy?

From NewYorkTimes. Story by By Norimitsu Onishi and Adam Nossiter.

At Coscharis, the leading dealer of luxury cars in Abuja, Happiness Adibe has been going through her worst year in her nine years as a saleswoman. Last year was her strongest: a record number of buyers, mostly businessmen and politicians, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying Range Rovers and Jaguars from her. Seventy percent of her customers paid cash.

“There’s no money now, no money,” Adibe said. “Contracts aren’t going on now, everything is standing still.”

At Royal Choice — a gated community of villas selling for up to $1.8 million each — Joshua Bialonwu has not scored a single sale since the new government took over. Under the previous administration, customers often bought villas in cash.

Private jets that used to crowd the airport have been grounded, their wings clipped by the new government’s crackdown on corruption.

Since assuming power in May on a pledge to root out the graft that has long permeated Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari has squeezed the flow of public funds in an effort to clean up Africa’s biggest economy.

He has put many public projects on hold to review the contracts, and ordered many government ministries, departments and agencies to consolidate their bank accounts for closer monitoring of financial transactions.

He has overhauled the management of the state oil company, while also moving to retrieve stolen money.

In recent days, the campaign escalated with the arrest of two high­ profile figures: Diezani Alison­ Madueke, the former oil minister whose five­-year tenure was marred by recurring accusations of widespread theft; and the chairman of a Nigerian oil company. Both were held as part of inquiries into corruption and money laundering.

“Those actions will sustain the fear that the culture of impunity is over and government’s will to prosecute is strong,” said Adams Oshiomhole, a governor leading a national panel investigating federal graft. “There’s no more free money flowing because of the attempts by the president to block it, but also the fear that, ‘If I’m caught now, I’ll be prosecuted.’”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is the continent’s top oil producer and one of the biggest producers in the world. Yet corruption has undermined the nation, helping to keep 68 percent of its population living on less than $1.25 a day and perpetuating instability, especially the long-­running conflict with Boko Haram.

Whether Buhari can maintain the pressure against graft, much less transform a society where corruption thrives at all levels, is far from clear. Over the years, previous assaults on the problem have fizzled.

The widening anti-­corruption drive has chilled the economy elsewhere in the country, but nowhere has its impact been felt as keenly as here in the capital.

Negotiations over what to do with ill­-gotten gains are taking place quietly.

Nasir El­Rufai, the governor of Kaduna state and a member of the panel investigating graft, said that associates of one former minister had approached him with an offer to return $250 million.

“When you say you want to refund, it means you are admitting that you took what was not yours,” Rufai said. “I said, ‘I am a governor, I am not involved in this. I will pass on your message.’”

Many officials and businessmen said that graft under former President Goodluck Jonathan reached levels not seen since military rule ended in 1999. Billions of dollars are believed to have disappeared from activities related to the oil industry, the source of 80 percent of all government revenues.

Last year, after the governor of the country’s central bank asserted that billions of dollars in oil revenue owed to the treasury was missing from public coffers, he was removed from his post.

The cash fueled a boom in high-­end real estate development in the capital, Abuja, and in Lagos, the nation’s main city. Villas and condominiums built or purchased to launder money tellingly remain unoccupied, real estate agents and businessmen say.

No high-­profile case of corruption has been prosecuted successfully in the past decade, reinforcing a culture of impunity.

Previous governments also had strong starts. After being elected president in 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo surprised many with an equally aggressive push against corruption.
But within a year or two, it was business as usual in Nigeria.

“Corruption will fight back,” said Sola Akinrinade, the head of a government anti-corruption academy.

Read more at NewYorkTimes.