A CULTURE OF ‘SETTLEMENT’

Corruption and its discourse in Nigerian public life are central to the country's political history (Osoba Reference Osoba1996). The penetration of the dominant capitalist form of accumulation under late colonialism (ibid.: 374), the consequent marginalisation of the African educated elite and the monopoly of political and economic power by Europeans resulted in the construction of access and intervention in the economic realm by the emergent public servants and local bourgeoisie as a form of ‘subversion’. This was true in reality as it was in perception. As the period of decolonisation wound down, the emergent African ‘Big Man’ was typically expected to appropriate for himself – and thence to his ethnic or regional group – a measure of capital with which he and his people were to engage in the battle against the internal ‘Others’ (ethnic/regional/religious) in the struggle to capture – and hold on to – power.

In his influential ‘two publics’ thesis, Ekeh (Reference Ekeh1975: 92) highlights the implications of this mindset with his argument that ‘the civic public in Africa is amoral and lacks the generalized moral imperatives operative in the private realm and in the primordial public’ (cf. de Sardan Reference de Sardan1999). Thus, Africans ‘who have served as state officials are expected by their own [people] to enrich themselves through corruption’ (Ellis Reference Ellis2006: 206). The national ‘predatory elite’ (Adebanwi Reference Adebanwi2001: 20) that promoted and followed this ‘expectation’ ‘turned state power into a weapon for stealing the nation blind’ (Tell 24.8.1998: 12), and took turns in pillaging the national treasury, such that Osoba (Reference Osoba1996: 383) characterised their serial looting as ‘army robbery – the highest stage of armed robbery’ (cf. Apter Reference Apter, J. and Comaroff1999: 268). This history of public graft created a great paradox in which ‘the scandalous, almost legendary, wealth of key ruling class members exist[ed] to mock the unspeakable mass poverty, misery and degradation of the Nigerian people’ (Osoba Reference Osoba1996: 383).

All previous anti-corruption strategies tried in the past by various Nigerian governments were ‘largely ineffectual’ (Riley Reference Riley1998: 142). Therefore, in announcing the planned war against corruption, President Obasanjo (Reference Obasanjo1999–2007) deplored the award of what he called ‘the World Cup of corruption’ to Nigeria by Transparency International, affirming that there would be no sacred cows under the new government. The most popular and most controversial of the agencies that Obasanjo proposed to use to wage this war was the EFCC, headed by a senior police officer, Mr Nuhu Ribadu.

THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION (EFCC)

For many highly placed Nigerians who had come to assume that every publicly declared anti-corruption war in Nigeria was either a ‘storm in a teacup’ or one cynically designed and deployed only against opponents of the regime in power, the unprecedented manner in which the EFCC under Ribadu went about its work created fear and panic. Much of the initiative for the establishment and legitimacy of the EFCC was initially driven by the presidency. Interesting enough, President Obasanjo was not initially enthusiastic about the creation of the EFCC – having earlier created a similar body, the ICPC, in 2000. However, the ICPC, which took a more ‘judicial’ approach to the investigation and prosecution of corrupt practices, was largely ineffective. One year after the ICPC was created, Nigeria was included in the list of non-cooperating countries by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF, which was created in 1989 at the G-7 Summit in Paris, is an intergovernmental organisation that develops and promotes ‘national and international politics to combat money laundering and terrorist financing’. Although Nigeria was added to the list in 2001, the government was officially unaware of it until it was brought to the president's notice in 2002 by Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, the Head of the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit of the Presidency, and co-founder of Transparency International, the global anti-graft organisation (Ribadu int.). Ezekwesili's explanation of the implications of FATF's action led to the creation of the EFCC with a ‘law enforcement approach’ to fight against corruption – as a strong complement to the judicial approach adopted by the ICPC. However, as revealed by Ribadu and others interviewed, even when the president eventually agreed to set up the EFCC and, later, reluctantly approved the appointment of Ribadu – whom he had never met – he did not have great expectations from the new anti-graft agency. As a reflection of this, when the EFCC was established in April 2003, absolutely no provision was made for it: it had no budget, no office space and no staff. Ribadu had to build the organisation from scratch, starting with a loan of ₦100 million and office space granted by a federal agency, the Public Bureau of Enterprises (BPE), headed by Nasir El-Rufai – who later became Ribadu's friend and close associate in government (El-Rufai int.; Ribadu int.). The EFCC was only included in the federal budget in 2004. A further indication of the initial attitude of the presidency to the new Commission was that, as revealed by Ribadu and an activist Lagos lawyer, Mr Femi Falana, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr Kanu Agabi, who supervised the process of drafting the law, told Falana in 2002 that the presidency was looking for a high-ranking police officer to head a new agency ‘to fight 419 [Advance Fee Fraud]’ (Falana int.; Ribadu int.). Also, it was initially difficult to get the bill establishing the Commission passed by the National Assembly, which had been infiltrated by alleged criminals.Footnote ⁶ Therefore, it can be argued that, despite the president's grand rhetoric later about the anti-corruption war with regard to the EFCC, there were no great expectations for the Commission from the presidency, or even among Nigerians in general, when it was started. It was originally a token response to the blacklisting of Nigeria by the FATF.

The wide powers that the EFCC was granted by its enabling act, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act 2002, were also a function of the attempt to respond to the FAFT's action and to widen the parameters of the existing anti-corruption legislation. However, as the EFCC took down leading advance fee fraudsters and other highly placed public officers, the president was eager to appropriate the local and international acclamation that the Commission was attracting by the end of its first year of operation. Against this backdrop of local and international recognition, the president subsequently gave greater backing to the activities of the EFCC and Ribadu's leadership – even while recognising the political uses to which he could put the wide-ranging powers and investigative and prosecutorial activities of the Commission.

The initial legal instrument setting up the Commission, the EFCC (Establishment) Act of 2002, was repealed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act (2004) which is currently in force. This Act empowers the EFCC ‘to prevent, investigate, prosecute and penalize economic and financial crimes’. The Commission is also charged with responsibility for enforcing the provisions of other laws and regulations relating to economic and financial crimes, including the Money Laundering Act 1995, the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2004, the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act 1995, the Failed Banks (Recovery of Debts) and Financial Malpractices in Banks Act 1994, the Banks and other Financial Institutions Act 1991, the Miscellaneous Offences Act, and any other law or regulation relating to economic and financial crimes, including the Criminal Code (see Adebanwi Reference Adebanwi2010).

The Commission advertises its mission as including to ‘curb the menace of the corruption that constitutes the cog in the wheel of progress; protect national and foreign investments in the country; imbue the spirit of hard work in the citizenry and discourage ill gotten wealth; identify illegally acquired wealth and confiscate it; build an upright workforce in both public and private sectors of the economy; and contribute to the global war against financial crimes.’Footnote ⁷

THE ANTI-CORRUPTION CZAR AND THE ‘LOOTING CLASS’

The appointment of Nuhu Ribadu, an assistant commissioner of police, as the head of the EFCC did not attract much attention from the media and the public. Given what many considered the lethargy of the ICPC, the anti-corruption body established about three years earlier, the new anti-graft commission did not hold much promise. The Nigerian police had cemented its image as a very corrupt organisation, and not much was expected from an officer from its ranks. However, Ribadu eventually became a phenomenon that would redefine the history of the war against public graft in Nigeria.

Ribadu attended Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he earned a degree in law in 1983, and later attended the Nigerian Law School. He was called to the bar in 1984 and later earned a Master of Law from the same university. He had served as an assistant commissioner of police and as head of the Legal and Prosecution Department of the Police Force before he was appointed chairman of the EFCC.

By the time of his appointment, President Obasanjo's government had itself been mired in largely unsubstantiated allegations of massive graft,Footnote ⁸ apart from having returned to office in the aftermath of a presidential poll believed to have been massively rigged. Therefore, it was interesting to many observers that Obasanjo supported the establishment of such a proactive anti-graft agency at a point when his credibility and legitimacy were abysmally low. Also, curiously, Obasanjo himself had undergone a fiscal makeover which saw his Ota Farm rejuvenated, even though it was virtually in ruins by the time he returned from General Abacha's jail barely four years earlier. The massive market-led neo-liberal reforms – called ‘privatisation’ – which were reintroduced and expanded by the new democratic government likewise created greater room for corruption in the public sector, which not only supervised this process, but continued to police the regulatory system. Despite these credibility problems, however, President Obasanjo raised his anti-graft rhetoric, while his public support for the activities of the EFCC, and also ICPC, remained strong.

Ribadu went about his business with unusual zeal. At first, the Commission was most successful in going after fraudsters in the Advance Fee Fraud business and related economic crimes. This was principally because, according to Ribadu, the police had a prepared list of suspected criminals, even though the top echelon of the force was allegedly on the payroll of the fraudsters. The most celebrated of the Advance Fee Fraud cases was the one involving Emmanuel Nwude, the ‘king of 419’, who had defrauded a Brazilian banker, Mr Nelson Sakaguchi, of the sum of US$242 million over a three-year period. Nwude and his accomplices were tried and jailed and the properties believed to have been acquired through fraudulent means were confiscated. This increased the credibility of the EFCC both at home and abroad, particularly because the Commission returned the recovered monies to the Brazilian victim. Since that bold step in 2003, many more fraudsters have been investigated, arrested and prosecuted (Adebanwi Reference Adebanwi2010: 46–99). The Commission secured no fewer than 250 convictions in four years, mostly in relation to the Advance Fee Fraud and Internet crimes (TheNEWS 25.3.2008). Among these were some federal legislators, including Maurice Ibekwe, who died in 2004 while standing trial.

A number of factors helped Ribadu to prosecute the war against public graft with some measure of success. The first was that, whatever the realities, Nigerians are generally supportive of anti-corruption campaigns, even if, for various reasons – ethno-regional, religious or political party affiliation, affective networks etc. – they would rather not have specific popular public figures suffer prosecution and punishment. This may seem contradictory on the surface, but is actually one of the key indices of the systemic crisis in Nigeria. Given the incapacity of the state, its divisive nature, and the pervasive poverty which these (re)produce – much of which is also explained by corruption – many Nigerians survive on the patron–client relationships and other identitarian connections which link them to particular members of the elite. This means that while Nigerians are generally socially supportive of anti-corruption efforts, many are politically or economically connected to the corruption complex, directly or indirectly (see Smith Reference Smith2006). And often those who are so connected are eager to defend those to whom they are connected against accusations of corruption. Despite this, Nigerians, for the most part, are generally supportive of ‘progressive’ campaigns such as the anti-corruption war. The EFCC under Ribadu tapped into this eagerness of Nigerians to support any effort that was likely to lead to the building of a better polity and a greater society.

Second, Ribadu had the almost unalloyed support and confidence of the all-powerful president that Nigeria had between 1999 and 2007, despite occasional tensions in their relationship. Even though this support was manifested, on some occasions, through President Obasanjo's infamous disregard for due process and disrespect for constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances, for the most part it served the Commission well in fending off powerful elements who would have wanted the EFCC to become a ‘toothless bulldog’. Even though, as noted, President Obasanjo was unaware of the ‘phenomenon’ that the EFCC under Ribadu would become, apart from having some displeasure from time to time about some of the actions of the Commission, he came to enjoy the credibility that its activities gave to his administration both locally and internationally. However, Obasanjo's predilection to use the Commission for personal, political battles also posed a grave limitation to its activities. This became the most important criticism against the Commission under Ribadu, rendered in simple, sometimes ill-informed and/or mischievous, ways by anti-Ribadu elements and some of his critics. Contrary to such criticisms, some of those who were investigated and/or prosecuted were the president's political friends, allies or wards. Examples include the Inspector General of Police, Tafa BalogunFootnote ⁹ (accused by opposition elements as having used the police to help the president's party to rig the elections in 2003), Chief Bode George, the deputy chairman (south-west) of the ruling People's Democratic Party and the president's ‘Man Friday’ (who was eventually jailed after Obasanjo left power, based on the investigations and report submitted by Ribadu to the president), Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State (whom Obasanjo had anointed as his successor, until dissuaded by a report submitted by Ribadu to the president on allegations of corruption against him), and even Obasanjo's daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, and his successor, Umaru Yar'Adua (who, as state governor, was investigated by the EFCC and some of his commissioners arrested).

A third reason for the EFCC's measured success is the coalition of civil society groups and anti-graft campaigners who had become prominent, and locally and internationally powerful, from the 1980s when a democratisation wave swept through much of Africa and led to the apparent defeat of the ancien regime. These agencies and actors, taking a page from global liberal discourses of democratisation, transparency and the rule of law, popularised conditions and sensibilities that are fundamentally attuned to accountability and social and political auditing. For example, Ribadu's supporters included the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the prominent Lagos lawyer and veteran of many battles for public good; Mr Femi Falana, also a prominent Lagos lawyer and president of the West African Bar Association (WABA); and Professor Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate and public intellectual.

The democratic environment was thus critical to giving the anti-graft war a legitimacy that was non-existent under military rule. A vital organ of civil society, the vocal press, was particularly important to Ribadu's success. With a history of opposition to the mode, manner and expression of the dominant elite's interests, the press was already culturally attuned to amplifying Ribadu's significance and activities. However, Ribadu himself recognised the centrality of Nigeria's resilient press to his campaign early on, and forged public and private alliances with the press and, later, the media in general – including the broadcast and online media. He once said that ‘it is inconceivable to talk of the anti-corruption programme of government without taking into consideration the critical role of the media which is about the most important ally in our collective efforts to rid our country of the corruption malaise’ (Sun 13.2.2006).

The international community was another critical factor. For many years, particularly during the military era, the very name of Nigeria had become a byword for dysfunctionality and criminality. Beyond the recurrent political crises which threatened the strategic interests of the United States and its Western allies, the prevalence of criminal networks of drug and financial scams which undermined national security in many Western countries was sufficient grounds for the West to support any campaign to reduce their incidence in Nigeria. With the new international security situation in the post-9/11 era, the West became even more interested in monitoring money laundering, given its possible linkages to terrorism. The United States and the European Union were therefore very eager to support a result-oriented anti-graft agency such as the EFCC. The European Union donated a total of US$32 million to the EFCC in the four years from 2004 to 2008, representing 85% of its foreign support (Reuters 12.2.2009). Significantly, this meant that the EFCC was largely free from resource constraints in the discharge of its duties. Apart from the EU and the United States, international civil society groups, international non-governmental organisations and anti-graft agencies such as Transparency International (TI), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and Human Rights Watch (HRW), were all impressed by what the EFCC achieved and provided different forms of material assistance.

The last factor is the unusual courage and personal conviction of Ribadu himself. For someone who had spent so many years in the Nigeria Police and understood very well the power dynamics in Nigeria and how those dynamics are imbricated in and sustained by the structures of corruption, Ribadu showed uncommon valour in his decision to take on the members of the core elite who were produced and reproduced by those peculiar dynamics. This became more evident when he was pushed out of office. Ribadu always felt that his task at the EFCC amounted to a potential sacrifice of his life. In 2003, when he took charge of EFCC, he declared: ‘I am ready to give my life…. When you go into the Army, you know you are going to be killed or you are going to kill. And I look at it not too different from that. This work is worth doing, I am ready to give my life for Nigeria’ (TheNEWS 25.3.2008).

Ribadu investigated some of the most powerful elements in the country while publicly denouncing them. In a situation that was almost unprecedented in the country's history, the fear of the anti-graft Czar became the beginning of wisdom for most politicians. Although some felt that Ribadu's activities bordered on foolhardiness and objected to some of his methods, many in Nigeria and abroad applauded him. The fact that the EFCC under Ribadu investigated, arrested or prosecuted the most powerful politicians, in and out of office, contributed to the Commission's popularity among the public, although it was also precisely what contributed to its notoriety among the political class. However, the style adopted, and the fact that those who were investigated, ‘indicted’ or prosecuted among the political class were largely, but not exclusively, President Obasanjo's political enemies or those who fell out with him – including, at one time, his vice-president, Atiku Abubakar – made the Commission susceptible to allegations of acting as ‘Obasanjo's errand dogs’ (see Akinnola Reference Akinnola2008; Okoi-Uyouyo Reference Okoi-Uyouyo2008).

One of the first set of high-profile prosecutions was that of Ribadu's former boss, the then Inspector General of Police (IGP) [head of the federal police], Mr Tafa Balogun. The Commission investigated and discovered that Balogun had so corruptly enriched himself that he had become a billionaire. When he was presented with the evidence, Obasanjo compulsorily retired Balogun on 18 January 2005. Consequently, the EFCC arrested him on 28 March 2005. On 4 April 2005, he was charged to court on 70 (later 149) counts of money laundering, theft of police funds, investing stolen funds in blue chip firms and banks, and owning several accounts where huge sums of looted monies, up to US$52 million, were hidden under fictitious names. Altogether, Balogun allegedly stole ₦10 billion from the Nigerian Police Force (The Guardian 4.4.2005). A section of the political class was angered by Balogun's trial, arguing that President Obasanjo and the ruling party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP), had used the same Balogun as head of the police force for the rigging of the election that returned Obasanjo to power, as well as many of the PDP candidates at the state level in 2003. When Balogun reportedly initially refused to write a statement for the EFCC, stating that, ‘if I decide to say anything, this government will fall, please leave me alone’ (Independent 4.4.2005), some concluded that he was speaking to this and several other alleged secret deals with the administration. The former IG was eventually sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. But the sentences ran concurrently, therefore, effectively, he spent six months in jail. Many critics were shocked at the ‘light’ punishment that Balogun got.

Another major trial that again attracted criticism from the Commission's adversaries was the arrest and trial of the governor of the oil-rich state of Bayelsa, Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha. In September 2005, Alamieyeseigha was arrested by the British Metropolitan Police at Heathrow Airport, with a sum of one million pounds in his possession. But while waiting to appear in court over the charges of laundering £1.8 million (US$3.2 million), he escaped from Britain and returned to Nigeria. President Obasanjo, reportedly working with the EFCC and the Bayelsa State House of Assembly, ensured that Alamieyeseigha was impeached in December 2005, shortly after he returned to Nigeria. The EFCC made available to the House the profile of Alamieyeseigha's alleged heist valued at ₦1.7 billion. He was eventually arrested, publicly handcuffed and detained by the EFCC. Alamieyeseigha was detained for almost two years until 2007, when he eventually made a plea bargain and was convicted and jailed. Many of his properties in Nigeria, the United Kingdom and South Africa, with an oil refinery in Ecuador which he was said to have acquired with some of the stolen funds, were confiscated and auctioned (Daily Trust 14.5.2008). While some criticised the ‘blackmail’ of state legislators by the EFCC, which was said to have been responsible for the impeachment of Alamieyeseigha, others criticised the ‘deal’ which ensured that Alamieyeseigha got a light sentence given the severity of the allegations against him. The former governor, who forfeited property and stocks worth US$7.9 million, was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Yet others saw Alamieyeseigha's ‘ordeal’ as his ‘punishment’ for supporting Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who at that time was already involved in a public political struggle against President Obasanjo.

One major case that did considerable damage to the EFCC's credibility was the investigation and purported ‘indictment’ of Atiku Abubakar. For many, the ‘Atiku affair’ was more about politics than corruption. Obasanjo's second term had begun on a polarised note as the president attempted to ‘punish’ Abubakar for his ‘disloyalty’, by first seizing the party machinery from Abubakar, and then marginalising him. As the relationship between the two degenerated, Abubakar tried to rebuild his damaged political machinery in order to succeed Obasanjo. Obasanjo, aware of Abubakar's famed capacity for political networking, tried to stop him. The EFCC was asked to conduct an investigation into the activities of the vice-president in relation to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), which the vice-president headed. Its report concluded that the vice-president had corruptly enriched himself. The Federal Executive Council (FEC) then set up an Administrative Panel of Enquiry into the Petroleum Training Development Fund (PTDF) headed by the Justice Minister, Bayo Ojo, which ‘indicted’ Abubakar in February 2006. Obasanjo got the Federal Executive Council to confirm Abubakar's ‘indictment’ and then asked him to resign, or else he would be removed. On the basis of this indictment, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) disqualified Abubakar – who had left the ruling party and become the presidential candidate of a new party, the Action Congress (AC) – from contesting elections. The decision was targeted at stopping Abubakar from contesting the presidential election of April 2007. When Abubakar went to court, the court ruled in his favour and dismissed the indictment as ‘unconstitutional’.

The Abubakar case became one of the biggest challenges to the credibility of the EFCC under Ribadu. While, indeed, many people saw the vice-president as likely to be implicated in many of the alleged cases of corruption over which Obasanjo and the EFCC were eager to nail him, including some bribery scandals involving US multinational companies and Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana, some critics were displeased that Ribadu's EFCC ignored Obasanjo's alleged complicity in some of these scandals as indicated – with documentary evidence – by the vice-president's media team.Footnote ¹⁰ However, Ribadu countered: ‘People go about saying that Obasanjo used me to go after his enemies, Obasanjo didn't use me, in fact may be it is the other way round. If you check, you will notice that the people we went after were actually Obasanjo's people’ (Abati Reference Abati2009). He then mentioned Obasanjo's political ‘friends’ who were investigated and prosecuted, such as Police IG Tafa Balogun, Rivers State Governor Peter Odili, Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye, and the president's daughter, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello.

Other critics regarded key investigations and trials of leading politicians as ‘inquisitorial’, or as an ‘aggressive campaign of selective prosecution’ (Reef Reference Reef2007:1), because they were against either those who were originally politically opposed to Ribadu's ‘patron’, Obasanjo, or those who had fallen out of favour with him. However, the argument was never, in any of these cases, that the affected public officials were not corrupt, but only that they were being ‘singled out’ in the sea of corruption. One important example of this was the ‘slush fund’ that Obasanjo, his estranged deputy, Abubakar, and leading members of the ruling PDP had allegedly mobilised for the approaching 2003 elections. This fund was kept in two accounts under the direct supervision of Otunba Fasawe, Obasanjo and Abubakar's ‘Man Friday’, who later fell out with Obasanjo, only to become a target of EFCC's investigations and ‘harassment’. Abubakar's media team released several copies of cheques that showed that Obasanjo's personal assistant, Mr Bodunde Adeyanju, ‘made over 100 sorties to the TIB [Trans International Bank] Abuja … between 1999 and 2004’ for withdrawals from the ‘scandalous’ bank account, for the use of ‘the President, his family, businesses, native community and the PDP’.Footnote ¹¹

While Ribadu dismissed the allegations of ‘selective enforcement’ of the rules based on the fact that many who were the president's friends were investigated and also, in some cases, prosecuted, he admitted that he had to make ‘strategic choices’ if he was going to succeed in the ‘ocean of corruption’ that was Nigeria. His former Chief of Staff, Dapo Olorunyomi (int.), explained that the ‘few cases’ that the critics pointed to in their charge of ‘selective enforcement’ were informed by the fact that they had to make ‘small compromises which hurt the Commission’, but that these were done to fulfil the ‘broad vision’ on the anti-graft agency. Such ‘small compromises’, Olorunyomi claimed, were inevitable in ‘a shaky political arrangement where institutions were not fully formed’. This, he added, ‘created a moral platform for rogues’ to attack the Commission. In attempting to explain the ambiguous role of the president in all this, Olorunyomi stated that ‘the source of the political will [of the Commission] was also a source of [an] albatross’.

Critics also raised questions about the strong-arm tactics, para-legal and undemocratic techniques and processes that the Commission sometimes used in achieving its admittedly worthy aims. Ribadu's successor and former police chief, Mrs Farida Waziri, who was alleged to have been sponsored into office by the very ‘thieves’ that the EFCC was set up to arrest and prosecute, derided Ribadu's methods. She stated: ‘We will not embrace the Gestapo approach where if you want to arrest one person, you go with 40 mobile policemen. You go to newspapers and radio, calling people thieves. But the rule of law is the difference.’ (Sa'idu Reference Sa'idu2009: 1). Under a democracy, Ribadu's critics pointed out, the rule of law should be guaranteed, particularly in its assumption of innocence until the accused is proven guilty. However, he was largely impatient with the attempt by the accused to use the courts, government machinery and other means to shield themselves from investigation and trial. Thus, when some former state governors used their states' high courts – dominated by judges they had either promoted or provided with different forms of material comfort when in office – to buy reprieve from the EFCC, the Commission arraigned them before the federal high courts or sought to reverse the decisions of the state high courts at the (federal) Appeal Court.

Against this backdrop, and given the fact that even his patrons in power were also believed to be as corrupt as, if not more corrupt than, those he was investigating and prosecuting, Ribadu had more than a daunting task. It was akin to challenging, if not ‘threatening’, the very foundations of the Nigerian state and the basis of the sustenance of the power elite. However, Ribadu seemed to have overlooked the complexity of the systemic crises which produced, nourished and sustained corruption in Nigeria – what might be described as the sociological basis of graft in Nigeria – while focussing on its manifestations and consequences. It is against the backdrop of such limitations that Szeftel (Reference Szeftel1998: 236) calls for ‘a more holistic and coherent view of the various forces that shape’ corruption in Africa and its related vices.

In the end, Ribadu ensured the conviction of over 250 people – mostly non-public office-holders – and recovered US$5 billion in cash and property with over 2,103 cases pending (Vanguard 11.4.2008). According to a source who worked with the Commission (Lamorde int.), international security organisations provided strategic intelligence support to the EFCC under Ribadu. More important, the Commission was provided with the most sophisticated financial intelligence gathering technologies, which gave it access to virtually every financial transaction by Nigerians at home and abroad.

WHEN CORRUPTION FIGHTS BACK

After a bright start in Kenya, Angola, Nigeria and South Africa, the anti-corruption war in Africa quickly stalled. And such was the ensuing disappointment within critical circles that by mid 2009 Daniel Kaufmann, the Brookings Institution-based authority on corruption, announced the ‘era of major backtracking on the anticorruption drive’ in Africa (Dugger Reference Dugger2009). ‘And one of the most poignant illustrations [of this]’, Kaufmann added, ‘is the fate of the few anticorruption commissions that have had courageous leadership. They're either embattled or dead’ (ibid.)

Kaufmann is alluding here to the effects of the activities of conservative forces which pushed back against the anti-corruption campaign in different countries. In Nigeria, the leader of the onslaught against Ribadu was James Onanefe Ibori, the indicted former governor of the oil-rich state of Delta who had been previously convicted twice in Britain and had, in 1993, had his account frozen in the USA (Ndibe Reference Ndibe2009). The Ibori case is very significant. It embodies our larger argument that, in liberalising societies, anti-corruption campaigns are often consumed in the vortex of elite wrangling and political ambitions.

Ibori is publicly regarded in Nigeria as one of the ‘godfathers’ of sleaze and graft (Vanguard 28.9.2006). He was a close friend of the embattled vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, and also famously had a ‘direct line’ to President Obasanjo himself, playing a prominent part in the latter's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to secure a tenure extension towards the end of his second term in office. When Yar'Adua eventually succeeded Obasanjo in 2007, Ibori became one of the most powerful persons in the country. In fact, he was reported to have personally selected Yar'Adua's Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, the then little-known Michael Aondoakaa, in the hope of reining in Ribadu and the EFCC. As if to validate this suspicion, hardly had Aondoakaa assumed office when he started insisting on the oversight functions of his office over the EFCC. Aondoakaa insisted that the Commission must consult him before prosecuting anyone, and that his ministry must be the prosecutor. Many believed he was acting on the script of Ibori and his fellow indicted governors. Law enforcement officers in Nigeria and the UK believed that the AGF was prepared to shield Ibori from prosecution (Coulson Reference Coulson2007). Aondoakaa also refused to cooperate with the EFCC and the British police over the investigation of Ibori, who was being investigated for money laundering in the UK.

Despite all this, Ribadu pursued Ibori as if totally unaware of his role in installing the new president, and despite Ibori's persistent attempts to pressure Ribadu into dropping the investigation – attempts which included an alleged bribe of US$15 million, which was deposited with the EFCC Central Bank as exhibit (Ribadu int.; Aruwan Reference Aruwan2009). Ibori was eventually arrested in Nigeria by the EFCC on 12 December 2007. This arrest was seen as a bold statement from the EFCC that, despite what many saw as its limitations under Obasanjo, no one was safe from prosecution. Ibori was subsequently arraigned on a 129-count charge of corruption and money laundering of over ₦9.1 billion. In ostensible response to the pressures, Yar'Adua told The Guardian newspaper (13.12.2007) that the prosecution of Ibori would be jointly conducted by the EFCC and the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation – Ibori's alleged protégé. With Ibori's arrest and trial, Ribadu seemed to have ‘overstepped his boundaries’, and a decision on his exit from office seems to have been taken at that point. The actual process of his removal was messy and riddled with many official gaffes and contradictions. Even so, it brought home how dangerously close Ribadu had been to, quite literally, ‘taking food from the mouth’ of the ruling elite.

Before he left office, President Obasanjo, in recognition of Ribadu's anti-graft work, promoted him from the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) to Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), jumping the rank of Commissioner of Police. Shortly after President Yar'Adua inaugurated the Police Service Commission on 5 August 2007, the Commission, citing ‘irregularities and non-compliance with due process’, annulled Ribadu's promotion and asked him to revert to his earlier rank. Ribadu rejected his ‘demotion’. But as he realised later, the plot against him was far thicker. On 27 December 2007, the Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, announced that the police had nominated Ribadu for a ‘compulsory’ senior officers' course at the Nigerian Institute of Police and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru, Plateau State (Punch 22.11.2008).

This was a clever plot because it meant that Ribadu would have to leave his position, even though he had been confirmed by the Senate for another term of five years which had just started. According to the statutes regulating admission into NIPSS, no officer in the police force below the rank of Commissioner for Police was qualified to attend a course at NIPSS (Punch 22.11.2008). Since Ribadu had been demoted below this rank, he was not qualified for the course. It was thus obvious that anti-Ribadu forces had gained the support of the Police Service Commission and the Inspector General of Police. When President Yar'Adua announced his approval of the decision of the police chief, it became clear that the plot had been hatched with the imprimatur of the highest echelons of government. The Nigerian Bar Association later expressed ‘serious doubts concerning the commitment of government in combating the menace of corruption’ owing, among other things, to the ‘outstanding issues of corrupt practices in government circles’ (ThisDay 18.8.2009: 1).

After considering other candidates for Ribadu's post, President Yar'Adua, apparently bowing to pressure from the public and international community, appointed Ribadu's deputy and Director of Operations of the EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde, as the acting chairman of the agency (Punch 12.1.2008; ThisDay 12.1.2008). Yet anti-graft forces were still uncomfortable with the arrangement, since, as former Bayelsa State governor and ex-convict Alamieyeseigha said, ‘the engine room’ (Sun 17.6.2008) of the investigations carried out by the agency was Lamorde. On 15 May 2008, five months after the controversial ‘study leave’ granted Ribadu, Yar'Adua announced the appointment of Mrs Farida Waziri, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), as replacement for Ribadu. For many, this appointment was the height of the duplicity of the Yar'Adua government and a perfect illustration of the influence of the corrupt elements in the new government (ThisDay 16.5.2008). Public cynicism was deepened after media reports that the new appointee had stood surety for the former governor of Benue State, George Akume, during his trial by the EFCC for corruption; and that she had been Ibori's ‘consultant’ during Ibori's troubles with the Commission (www.elendureports.com, accessed 28.5.2008). When she visited Nigeria in 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented that the EFCC in the post-Ribadu era had ‘fallen off’ its former high pedestal (Olaleye Reference Olaleye2009).

On 23 December 2008, the police authorities, after months of guile and guise, announced Ribadu's dismissal from the police ‘for acts of gross indiscipline, insubordination and absence from duty which are singularly and collectively acts punishable under rules 030401 of Public Service Rules 2006’ (Leadership 24.12.2008). For informed observers such as Professor Wole Soyinka (Reference Soyinka2008), Ribadu's travails were evidence that ‘national looting is now consecrated’ in the country.

CONCLUSION: DEMOCRACY AND COMPETITIVE THIEVERY

Drawing on the Foucaultian concept of governmentality, Nikolas Rose (Reference Rose1990: 10, 14) has argued that ‘attempts to invent, promote, install and operate mechanisms of rule … are rarely implemented unscathed, and are seldom adjudged to have achieved what they set out to do’. He posits that ‘technologies … produce their own difficulties, fail to function as intended, and sometimes intersect poorly with the rationalities in terms of which their role is conceived’. The hybridity leveraged in the particular context of the anti-corruption war spearheaded by the EFCC under Ribadu, which used the instruments of rational-legal domination subsisting in an environment of patrimonial domination (including those mobilised by President Obasanjo, whose support and encouragement, ironically, were also critical to the success achieved by the EFCC) to confront the corrupt practices produced by patrimonial domination, is an example of such challenges to the ‘mechanism of rule’.

Evidence in the literature on the effects of democracy on corruption has been mixed, even if the assumption has been that the former should lead to the lessening or eradication of the latter (see Robinson Reference Robinson and Robinson1998: 2; Rock Reference Rock2007). For the most part, democratic theorists have ignored the issue of political corruption, perhaps on the assumption that while it raises ‘a multitude of practical issues’, corruption raises ‘few theoretical’ issues (Warren Reference Warren2004: 328). However, with the emphasis in recent literature on the fact that corruption is as much a symptom as a cause of dysfunction within democracies (ibid.: 328), democratic theorists may begin to pay more attention to the relationship between corruption and democracy. This case is one further illustration of this need, particularly in Africa – trapped as she is in the mire of corruption and its devastating effects on democracy and development.

However, it is important to ground the conceptualisation of corruption in the context in which it is discussed, particularly in the light of the ‘considerable dispute’ over what ‘corruption’ means and entails (Johnston Reference Johnston2005: 10). While the term has been used to describe ‘a myriad of behaviours loosely linked by some sense of breaking the laws, illicit personal enrichment or the abuse of power/privilege’ (Brown & Cloke Reference Brown and Cloke2004: 282; cf. Holmes Reference Holmes2006: 17–43; Moran Reference Moran2001), or, in IFI-speak, ‘the abuse of public office for private gain’ (World Bank 1997: 8, in Brown & Cloke Reference Brown and Cloke2004: 283), scholars have attempted to unpack the basic definitions in the hope of achieving a more nuanced understanding of the specificities. One important criticism of the standard definitions of corruption is their assumption that corruption is a phenomenon of the public sector (Brown & Cloke Reference Brown and Cloke2004: 283), which obscures how private sector corruption, partly induced by market-led economic reforms, produces complex linkages with corruption in the public sector (ibid.)

First, this classification transcends the private–public sector dichotomy in the analysis of corruption, an unstable or even, in some cases, non-existent, dichotomy in many African states (Theobald Reference Theobald1999: 492). Second and more important, it helps us to go beyond the ‘neutral’ technical definitions and fixations of the neo-liberal paradigm – the promotion of ‘good governance’ (see Blundo & de Sardan Reference Blundo and Olivier de Sardan2006: 6–7). Corruption in Nigeria is systemic and not only retards economic growth and threatens democracy, but makes both almost impossible in real terms. The Nigerian case is not merely about the theft of state resources at an alarming level, it is about full-scale banditry. It is entrenched in every sector, private and public, and corruption feeds on the logic that subtends and links one sector to the other in an unending spiral of corruption. Therefore, any anti-corruption campaign can only go so far without radical systemic changes that will demobilise the structures, institutions and logic that establish and nourish corruption. However, as a rule, the neo-liberal order shies away from total systematic overhaul which system-wide corruption calls for.

Some scholars have noted that much of the current orthodoxy in the anti-corruption efforts proceeds from a neo-liberal model of development that has particular political implications which those ‘committed to a more progressive social agenda’ should distrust (Brown & Cloke Reference Brown and Cloke2004: 274). Within a political economy approach, corruption is revealed not as a mere – or blatant – violation of the rules, but, more important, as a ‘component (of) how power is manipulated in order to maintain social (political) and economic advantage’; thus, corruption, particularly in Africa, must be linked to our conceptualisation and understanding of the state, inequality, injustice and social division – a system-wide understanding which, in turn, is linked to the political economy of specific African states. Viewed from this perspective, corruption becomes the basis of, and the source of nourishment for, the extant structures of power in Africa; the cause, not merely the effect, of the systemic crisis that the IFIs approach as a technical problem. Against this backdrop, where anti-corruption efforts are not backed up by other radical institutional reforms – not only economic, but social and political – such efforts become prey to the overall endemic (systemic) crisis, a part of which, initially, necessitated the anti-corruption war.

Within the neo-liberal paradigm, it is suggested that ‘corruption rises, at least initially, in newly democratizing countries, before falling as democracies become consolidated’ (Rock Reference Rock2007: 1). Perhaps in defence of this assumption in the Nigerian case, it can be argued that the Fourth Republic is only ten years old and, therefore, may still witness a fall in the incidence of corruption. But the prognosis does not match this assumption or expectation. With democratic rule, corruption seems to have been democratised in Nigeria, given the fate of the anti-corruption Czar as described in the paper, and the fact that those accused of the most grievous corrupt practices are now the ones determining policy under the new government – including even the ‘anti-corruption’ war.

Mohtadi and Roe (Reference Mohtadi and Roe2003 in Rock Reference Rock2007: 2) have argued that ‘young democracies suffering from insufficient checks and balances and lack of transparency, provide rent-seekers with greater access to public officials and hence greater opportunities for collecting public sector rents, at least up to a point, without making the corrupt acts of rent-seekers and officials open to public scrutiny’. While the premise of this model largely holds true for Nigeria, this essay points to the fact that two of its critical assumptions are flawed. First, the idea of ‘rent-seeking’, based as it is on a ‘dated’ conception of ‘political corruption’, assumes ‘percentages’ and ‘cuts’ from the process of public spending/investment as the main, if not the only, means of official corruption in the post-colony. The experience in Nigeria has been qualitatively and practically different. Apart from the military leaders who directly took money from the national coffers using no pretext whatsoever, politicians, such as the many whom the EFCC has had to investigate, directly appropriated state resources without necessarily having to take ‘rents’ on the process of expending or investing the resources. ‘Rents’ have become inadequate for the politician-in-power in contemporary Nigeria. Second, the assumption of a lack of transparency and the absence of public scrutiny, while true in part, could be, and was, bridged by the very activities of the anti-graft agency such as the one examined here. Despite the absence of the legal codes guaranteeing freedom of information, the establishment and activities of Ribadu's EFCC ensured an unprecedented access to the means, methods and instruments of corruption under Nigeria's Fourth Republic.

Which, of course, is not to romanticise Ribadu's accomplishments. Specifically, due attention needs to be paid to the limitations imposed on the EFCC and Ribadu by the fact that the man who appointed Ribadu, President Olusegun Obasanjo, was himself constantly at the centre of a slew of corruption allegations. The apparent conflict of interest between a crusading anti-corruption czar, and a regime with its own ethical challenges, was to dog the EFCC throughout. This conflict actually speaks to the larger paradox in Nigerians' popular assessment of the EFCC under Ribadu. Ribadu was, and remains, a hero for taking on high-level corruption with unusual gusto and bravado. Yet his experience, or more precisely that of the EFCC, during Ribadu's period and after, is also emblematic of Nigerians' view that no one is immune from, or innocent in, the intertwining of politics, inequality and corruption.

The question may be asked why, despite support from a myriad of local and international institutions and interests, Ribadu – who became ‘the most popular and most feared man’ in Nigeria (Ishiekwene Reference Ishiekwene2008: vii) – was removed, and why the tempo of anti-corruption war has markedly declined with his exit. This case points to the limitations of anti-corruption crusades organised around a few ‘puritans’, as Colin Leys insisted more than four decades ago (Theobald Reference Theobald1999: 492), in the absence of supporting institutional changes that can only be brought about by a systemic overhaul. The ease with which Ribadu was removed from office in the middle of his guaranteed term by a sitting president acting under the influence of (and some would insist in cahoots with) corrupt elements and without question from the National Assembly suggests that Nigeria has a long way to go in winning the war against corruption.

Most public institutions and key politicians that exercised actual power in Nigeria in the post-Obasanjo era were opposed to Ribadu's continued stay in office because he had threatened or challenged key members of the power elite. However, the situation changed when President Yar'Adua died and the new president, Goodluck Jonathan, changed the configuration of power to ensure his own legitimacy and, perhaps, opportunities to continue in power.

Nonetheless, the centrality of the anti-corruption war for democratic rule has been noted by many public analysts in Nigeria and abroad. For instance, Soyinka (Reference Soyinka2007: 9, emphases in original) captures the reality and the relationship between corruption and democracy thus: ‘[In Nigeria] power derives from corruption which in turn fuels and guarantees power. The battle against corruption therefore goes beyond the walling out of illegal economic advantages. Corruption is the very bedrock of political illegitimacy. The tree of democracy cannot thrive on the compost of corruption.’ He emphasised that it is consequently critical to identify the attempt to cripple Ribadu and the EFCC ‘as an assault on the very bastion of democracy’, precisely because corruption undermines the culture of democracy and violates its fundamental principles (Chang & Chu Reference Chang and Yun-han2006: 259; Della Porta & Meny Reference Della Porta and Meny1997, in Szeftel Reference Szeftel1998: 227; Warren Reference Warren2004: 328).

Further research needs to focus on examining contexts where actual corruption is an inevitable product of the total organisation of society and state (see, for instance, Lindberg Reference Lindberg2003). In the Nigerian case, the millions of dollars that are needed for a politician to become a viable candidate for public office, win elections, keep and sustain supporters and allies cannot but produce deep pressures for corruption among and beyond the political elite and the other elites linked to them – including even international business elite, as the bribery of Nigerian officials by a US company, Halliburton, to win oil contracts worth US$6 billion shows (Adebowale & Ali Reference Adebowale and Ali2009: 1; December & Styne Reference December and Styne2010; Iriekpen Reference Iriekpen2009: 1; Peel Reference Peel2006). Thus, the anti-corruption war has to be premised on total systemic overhaul in Nigeria, including the total overhaul of the political and electoral system so as to discourage the centrality of personal and personalised financing of political parties, political ambitions and political office which has created a criminal industry. Related to that is the root and branch revamping of the economic structures which have produced widespread poverty, such that the formal rules of the democratic game are always susceptible to, and conditioned by, corruption.