FOR THE RECORDS: How Buhari undermined his anti-corruption war

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Major-General Muhammadu Buhari lost power after just about 20 months as the military head of state in the mid-1980s, but the public persona of a no-nonsense leader that he cultivated during the stint survived three decades.

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He preserved the reputation of a hater of corruption and corrupt officials, which became his rallying force when he began offering himself for election to be president on the nation’s return to civilian rule in 1999.

In the three election cycles from 2003 to 2011, he contested and garnered millions of votes at each round but always fell short of clinching the presidency.

But he ran again in 2015, memorably telling Nigerians that corruption was a threat to Nigeria’s survival. He urged citizens to vote him into office, reiterating that the country must defeat corruption or be destroyed.

He won the election, becoming the first person to defeat an incumbent president in Nigeria’s electoral history. His administration wasted no time delivering on its anti-corruption promises. Matching his rhetoric with action, he took on serving and retired military officers, many officials of the previous administration, and political allies accused of diverting arms funds. This became his iconic anti-corruption effort.

Judges and top political figures also faced charges. Mr Buhari’s government implemented measures like the Treasury Single Account (TSA) to curb the diversion of public funds and successfully overturned the $11 billion P&ID judgement against Nigeria.

But before Mr Buhari left office, the anti-corruption war had faltered. The war, initially thought to be unsparing, became selective. People facing corruption investigations got high-level appointments. Although Mr Buhari was not accused of corruption in person, his circle swelled with people accused of corruption. Public perception of his intolerance for corruption increasingly waned, as the administration’s actions and inactions increasingly distanced it from the president’s avowed stance against graft.

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By 2022, his final full year in office, Nigeria had dropped to 150th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), a decline from the 136th position it held in 2015 when he assumed office. In the 2023 ranking, Nigeria improved slightly to 145th place—but still nine positions lower than its 2015 standing.

Dasuki’s trial

Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel, served as National Security Adviser (NSA) under former President Goodluck Jonathan, overseeing coordination and arms procurement in the fight against terrorism, which was then restricted mainly to the North-east.

Accused of diverting $2.1 billion meant for arms, Mr Dasuki became one of the first prominent figures to be probed in the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption war. The arms scandal probe stood as the administration’s index of anti-corruption efforts. The administration also projected it as the mirror image of the large-scale corruption nurtured by the previous governments.

The State Security Service (SSS) arrested Mr Dasuki in December 2015. Then, the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation charged him at the Federal High Court in Abuja with money laundering and illegal possession of firearms. Subsequently, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charged him and a host of others at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, Abuja, with diversion of arms funds entrusted to his office. The SSS held Mr Dasuki in custody until 2019 in defiance of court orders for his release.

In a sign of internal conflict and lack of leadership, EFCC and the SSS worked at cross purposes regarding Mr Dasuki, ending up derailing his trial. While EFCC scrambled to prosecute Mr Dasuki, SSS presented him for trial at will. Mr Dasuki, too, capitalised on the illegality of his detention by occasionally insisting he would not attend his trial until court rulings ordering his release were obeyed. These led to a series of adjournments that contributed to stalling the case.

With the government’s unseriousness about the case, the judiciary turned the case into a ping-pong game, passing it from one judge to another and adjourning the trials incessantly. Almost ten years after the government instituted these charges against Mr Dasuki and his co-defendants amid a publicity blitz, the cases have made no tangible progress, much less been concluded.

Maina’s scandal

The Abdulrasheed Maina saga exposed the deep moral crisis of the Buhari administration early.

In 2012, Mr Maina, who was engaged to sanitise the corrupt federal pension system, was accused of leading a massive pension fraud scheme worth more than N100 billion.

On 21 July 2015, the EFCC charged him, along with Stephen Oronsaye, a former Head of Service of the Federation, and two others, before the Federal High Court on 24 counts of procurement fraud and obtaining by false pretence.

Mr Maina was nowhere to be found. The trial of Mr Oronsaye and other co-defendants would later be separated from Mr Maina’s.

He was later believed to be in the United Arab Emirates, from where he kept lobbying to win the favour of the new Buhari administration.

Remarkably, in 2017, fugitive Mr Maina, formerly an assistant director at the Ministry of Interior, was secretly recalled and promoted to director of Human Resources. A PREMIUM TIMES investigation exposed how Mr Maina pulled the strings for his reinstatement through top officials of the Buhari administration, including the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, and the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau.

The backdoor deal sparked public outrage. Mr Maina would later speak of Mr Buhari’s knowledge of the reinstatement move. Recounting and justifying his role in the Maina saga, AGF Malami corroborated Mr Maina’s claim, but said Mr Buhari only came to be aware of his meeting with Mr Maina much later.

The renewed public attention in the case following the exposed secret reinstatement heightened the search for Mr Maina. The State Security Service (SSS) arrested him in 2019, after he reportedly sneaked into the country from Dubai. He was later prosecuted by the EFCC and jailed for eight years.

Although Mr Maina was successfully prosecuted and jailed during the Buhari administration, the secret moves to reinstate him cast doubts on the administration’s anti-corruption stance. The charges against Mr Maina would probably not have succeeded without the secret deal being exposed early.

In-fighting between Buhari’s anti-graft team

Unbridled inter-agency rivalry and turf battle between top-level officials was a fixture of Mr Buhari’s administration.

The National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, battled the president’s Chief of Staff, the late Abba Kyari. There was also a battle for supremacy between Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Usman Yusuf, a professor, and the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, also a professor, just as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Godfrey Onyeama, and the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, were similarly engaged in a turf battle.

However, none of these demonstrated a lack of leadership and cohesion within the upper echelon of Mr Buhari’s government more than the effort to appoint a substantive EFCC chair.

Top administration officials were sharply divided between backing and opposing Ibrahim Magu, appointed as the acting EFCC chair in 2015. On two occasions, Mr Buhari sent Mr Magu’s name to the Senate for confirmation as the substantive EFCC chair. On both occasions, the Senate rejected Mr Magu, citing the security report sent by SSS, an agency that reports to the president, to frustrate his appointment.

The internal conflict persisted. For more than three years after the second rejection, Mr Buhari kept Mr Magu in office in an acting capacity. Mr Magu was only removed in July 2020 after his antagonists in the government got the president to set up a panel to probe him and the EFCC. The president removed him from office before the probe started.

In November 2020, the panel chaired by a former President of the Court of Appeal, Ayo Salami, submitted its report to Mr Buhari. The president never acted on a line from the document until he left office in May 2023.

For the five years of Mr Magu’s acting period, EFCC, Nigeria’s flagship anti-corruption agency, was enmeshed in uncertainties. It was not until 2021, almost two years into the second half of Mr Buhari’s second and final term in office, that the president decided to appoint a substantive chair, Abdulrasheed Bawa.

Also, in his memoir, ‘Traversing the Thorny Terrain of Nigeria’s Justice Sector: My Travails and Triumphs,’ which he released weeks before the end of his tenure in office, Mr Malami documented his hostility with key anti-corruption figures in the government and how they allegedly derailed his key anti-corruption plan.

Abuse of state pardon

Nothing rubbished Mr Buhari’s anti-corruption avowal than the pardon he granted to convicted former Governors Joshua Dariye of Plateau State and Jolly Nyame of Taraba State while they were still serving their jail time for corruption. The pardon was granted with little regard for public interest and public sensibility regarding entrenched corruption in Nigeria.

As of the time the government pardoned them in 2022, the Supreme Court had affirmed 10-year jail time for Mr Dariye and 12 years’ imprisonment for Mr Nyame.

The pardon reversed two of the country’s most symbolic anti-corruption war successes. It placed an indelible question mark on the genuineness of Mr Buhari’s timeless anti-corruption stance.

Withdrawal of charges and selective war against corruption

The Buhari government did not just pardon high-profile corruption convicts; it also withdrew corruption charges against influential defendants based on personal and political considerations.

In July 2019, the Buhari administration withdrew corruption charges against former Gombe State Governor Danjuma Goje.

The government took the step some weeks after Mr Goje met Mr Buhari in the State House. The meeting was believed to centre around persuading Mr Goje to step down from the race for the Senate President, which was underway for Mr Buhari’s preferred candidate.

What Mr Goje apparently got in exchange for dropping his ambition to be senate president was to have his trial terminated.

Mr Malami initially said the charges were withdrawn because they lacked merit. But later, in his memoir, released in May 2023, he confirmed that it was done as a bargain for Mr Goje to withdraw from the senate president race for Mr Lawan. He insisted that it was done in the public interest.

Also, on 3 May 2023, less than a month before the end of the Buhari administration, Mr Malami terminated the N1.84 billion corruption charges filed against Nicholas Ashinze, a former military assistant to former NSA Dasuki, and eight others.

The AGF office swiftly withdrew the case at the Federal High Court in Abuja, immediately after taking over the trial from the EFCC, which charged the defendants over their use of the money allocated to the NSA office.

The steps kept with the general belief that Mr Buhari’s anti-corruption efforts were selective, informing the confidence crisis that characterised the administration’s anti-corruption war.

An instance was the appointment of former Governor of Akwa Ibom State and current Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, as the Minister for Niger Delta Affairs in 2019 despite allegations of corruption pending against him.

Before Mr Akpabio was appointed minister, the EFCC detained him in 2015 on allegations of corruption. In 2018, he defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Buhari administration’s promise that defection would not shield investigation and prosecution of anyone suspected of corruption was apparently suspended in Mr Akpabio’s case.

Appointees who enjoyed protection from probe, prosecution

Despite Mr Buhari’s anti-corruption proclamation, he ignored public outcry about corruption cases involving many of his top-level appointees. Some of these officials, believed to enjoy his confidence, only faced investigations or charges after his tenure ended.

Among these are former Minister of Aviation Hadi Sirika, former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Godwin Emefiele, former Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Usman Yusuf, former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Sadia Umar-Farouq, and former Minister of Women Affairs Pauline Tallen.

The former Minister of Aviation, Mr Sirika, who hails from Katsina State, like Mr Buhari, faced investigations after leaving office in 2023. He was charged before two separate courts at the end of the inquiry. In the first case, he faces prosecution on N2.8 billion contract fraud charges alongside his daughter, Fatima Sirika, Fatima’s husband, Jalal Hamma, and the couple’s firm, Al Buraq Global Investment.

In the other case, he stands trial alongside his brother and two companies on charges of abuse of office and contract fraud, allegedly involving N19.4 billion.

In June 2023, the former Minister of Women Affairs, Ms Tallen, was detained over allegations of money laundering, misappropriation of funds, and corrupt enrichment, with N2 billion allegedly diverted from the African First Lady Peace Mission Project.

In January 2024, the EFCC detained the former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Ms Umar-Farouq, for questioning over allegations of corruption in the handling of N37.1 billion social intervention funds during her tenure.

Six months later, in July 2024, the Federal High Court in Lagos ordered Ms Umar-Farouq to account for payments of N729 billion to 24.3 million poor Nigerians for six months. The court also ordered the former minister to provide the list and details of the beneficiaries who received the payments, the number of states covered and the payments per state.

Mr Buhari’s inaction towards the ministry’s suspicious handling of social intervention funds was not due to a lack of public concern.

In 2020, a civil society group went to court to demand accountability for the N523 million the ministry claimed to have spent on feeding school children during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Mr Buhari’s administration also disregarded allegations against the then-Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin Emefiele.

The new Tinubu administration probed Mr Emefiele and the CBN shortly after it came on board in 2023.

The Special Investigator commissioned by the Tinubu administration, Jim Obazee, submitted his report, which led to the multiple charges later filed against Mr Emefiele.

The former CBN governor now faces four separate criminal cases – one in Lagos and three in Abuja.

The EFCC is prosecuting him on six counts of criminal conspiracy, conferring undue advantage, and breach of trust, among others.

Mr Emefiele is also being tried at the Lagos State Special Offences Court in Ikeja for alleged abuse of office, receiving gratification, and corrupt demands.

In May 2024, the anti-graft agency arraigned Mr Emefiele on four counts of unlawful printing of Naira notes.

The anti-corruption agency charged Mr Emefiele with eight counts, including stealing and forgery, brought against him at the FCT High Court.

Similarly, in January, the EFCC arrested the former NHIS Executive Secretary, Mr Yusuf, over fraud charges filed against him on 29 November 2024 at the FCT High Court in Abuja.

On 3 February, the EFCC arraigned him on five counts of fraudulently awarding contracts worth N90.4 million to companies in which he and family members had interests. The EFCC alleged that he committed the offences between 2016 and 2017 while serving as the NHIS executive secretary. But he has denied all charges.

Also, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) received a petition detailing corruption allegations against former AGF Mr Malami, including the handling of forfeited assets by the EFCC. Many of the allegations were contained in a petition sent to Mr Buhari in 2020, which Mr Malami subsequently denied.

Failure to release, implement NDDC’s forensic audit report

In 2019, the Buhari administration launched an ambitious forensic audit of the finances of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) from 2001 to 2019. The interventionist agency was believed to have little to show for the trillions of naira it received for the period.

The then-AGF, Mr Malami, while receiving the report of the forensic audit on behalf of the government in July 2021, said the probe uncovered 13,777 compromised Niger Delta projects and 362 unreconciled accounts of the NDDC.

Mr Malami, who noted that the NDDC received as much as N6 trillion from 2001, when it was established, to 2019, said the government was “concerned with the colossal loss occasioned by uncompleted and unverified development projects in the Niger Delta region, in spite of the huge resources made available to uplift the living standard of the citizens.”

He assured Nigerians that the federal government would, “without hesitation, strategically implement all aspects of the audit exercise that will promote probity and greater prosperity for the Niger Delta Region and Nigeria as a whole.”

He said the government would keep citizens informed on the issues and “apply the law to remedy the deficiencies outlined in the audit report as appropriate.”

He also promised “criminal investigations, prosecution, and recovery of funds not properly utilised for the public purposes for which they were meant.”

He also expressed the government’s commitment to reviewing the laws to reposition and restructure the NDDC for efficiency and better service delivery, among other things.

Contrary to these promises, the government not only ignored all entreaties to make the forensic report public, but it also failed to implement any of its recommendations or launch its avowed criminal enforcement and assets recovery actions.