U.S. Opposes Nigeria Plan to Hand Looted Funds to Governor

The U.S. is opposing plans by Nigeria’s government to hand about $100 million the American authorities say was stolen by deceased former dictator Sani Abacha to a top ruling party official.

The disagreement may hamper future cooperation between the two nations to recover state money moved offshore by Abacha, who Transparency International estimates may have looted as much as $5 billion during his 1993-98 rule. A commitment by Nigeria to transfer the funds to Kebbi state Governor Abubakar Bagudu appears to undermine Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s pledge to quell rampant graft in Africa’s top oil producer.

The U.S. Department of Justice says Bagudu was involved in corruption with Abacha. The DoJ also contends that the Nigerian government is hindering U.S. efforts to recover allegedly laundered money it says it’s traced to Bagudu. Buhari’s administration says a 17-year-old agreement entitles Bagudu to the funds and prevents Nigeria from assisting the U.S., according to recent filings from the District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington.

“This case illustrates how complex and contentious repatriating stolen assets to Nigeria can be,” said Matthew Page, an associate fellow at London-based Chatham House and former Nigeria expert for U.S. intelligence agencies. “Instead of welcoming U.S. efforts, Nigeria’s lawyers appear to be supporting the interests of one of the country’s most powerful families.”

Neither Bagudu nor a spokesman for Attorney General Abubakar Malami responded to requests for comment. A spokesman for Buhari said the settlement and the litigation were matters for Malami. A spokesman for the DoJ declined to comment.

Successive Nigerian governments have sought to recoup the money looted by Abacha, who died in office, and have so far repatriated more than $2 billion with the cooperation of other countries, according to U.S. court filings.

In the case involving Bagudu, the U.S. in 2013 initiated a forfeiture action against a host of assets, including four investment portfolios held in London in trust for him and his family, according to the district court filings.

Laundered Money

The DoJ said in a Feb. 3 statement that Bagudu, 58, was part of a network controlled by Abacha that “embezzled, misappropriated and extorted billions from the government of Nigeria.” Bagudu is the chairman of an influential body of governors representing the ruling All Progressives Congress.

Despite the forfeiture action being initiated following a Nigerian state request in 2012, Buhari’s government now says it can’t assist the U.S. because it’s bound by a settlement Bagudu reached with the administration of then-President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003, according to the court filings.

Under the terms of that accord, which was approved by a U.K. court, Bagudu returned $163 million of allegedly laundered money to the Nigerian authorities, which in exchange dropped all outstanding civil and criminal claims against him “stemming from his involvement in government corruption,” according to a Dec. 23 memorandum opinion by District Judge John D. Bates in Washington D.C.

That meant “Nigeria renounced any interest whatsoever” in Bagudu’s trust assets, including those the U.S. is attempting to recover for the West African nation, the opinion stated.

Bagudu was able to return to Nigeria after concluding the settlement and was elected as a senator in 2009. Six years later, he was voted in as Kebbi’s governor in elections that brought Buhari and his party to power.

Investment Portfolios

After Bagudu successfully sued Nigeria for violating the 2003 settlement, Buhari’s administration reached a new agreement with him in October 2018, according to the court filings. That would result in the transfer of ownership of the investment portfolios, worth 141 million euros ($155 million) to the Nigerian state, which would then pay 98.5 million euros to Bagudu and his affiliates, according to Bates’ Dec. 23 opinion. The funds are currently restrained by the U.K. at the request of the U.S.

Nigeria’s government claims the updated 2018 agreement with the Kebbi governor, which requires court approval in the U.K., will “curtail and mitigate its looming exposure” from the judgment in Bagudu’s favor.

The full texts of neither settlement was published in the court filings.

Buhari’s administration submitted the 2018 deal to the U.K. court in September to support its application to unfreeze the assets so they can be sent to Nigeria, according to the opinion. The court has yet to make a decision.


By William Clowes

Bloomberg

How internet access is improving in Nigeria

While access to the internet is still patchy across the African continent, the last decade has seen great strides in improving telecommunications in the region.

Nigeria in particular is one of Africa's largest telecom markets, benefiting from being the second largest economy on the continent.

Today, over 100 million Nigerians are now connected to the internet, with 250,000 new subscribers logging on in the last quarter of 2019, according to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission.

One player in the telecommunications market is electrical engineer Funke Opeke, who founded West Africa's leading communications services and network solutions provider MainOne in 2008.

Ms Opeke went to the US to study and obtained a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in the early 2000s. When she returned to Nigeria, she was disturbed to see just how wide the digital divide continued to be, compared to in developed nations.

"I knew that it was viable to build the infrastructure and deploy services and that there was a market for it," she tells the BBC.

"I also had a young son who questioned, 'why can't I get access to my online games' and just basic access like that, and I knew I had the know-how to do something about it."

Being the first

Within two years of the company being founded, MainOne had managed to build all 7,000km of West Africa's first privately owned, undersea high capacity submarine cable and put it into service.

Ms Opeke had thought that this would be the hard part about being a broadband internet provider, but she soon realised that there still many more challenges ahead.

"It was wishful thinking. Getting the capacity we brought in, which landed on the coasts of Nigeria, Lagos and Accra, and then into the hinterlands, getting it close to the people, has proven even more challenging and slower than building the cable itself," she says.

"For most of the services we are having to provide, they are being done on the continent for the first time."

Access to the internet is fast becoming democratised thanks to the explosion of smartphones in Africa, with more than 95% of internet users going online using mobile broadband, according to Coleago Consulting, a telecoms consultancy firm working in the African region.

Mobile networks are springing up across the continent, but it is hard to provide internet access without the help of under-sea cables operated by fixed line broadband providers like MainOne.

"There is a shortage of transmission and fibre links in Africa and this is certainly a very big growth area," Coleago Consulting's chief executive Stefan Zehle told the BBC.

"Mobile infrastructure requires a lot of fixed connectivity. The base stations and networks...need to be connected to data centres and globally to the internet.

"They need submarine cables, and historically this has been a big bottleneck in Africa."

Problems with governance

One of the major problems MainOne encountered was governance and how economic growth in various African nations impacted the speed at which infrastructure could be built, despite the fact that overseas investment was pouring into the continent at the time.

"The GDP per capita in most advanced markets is at least 10 times what we have in Nigeria, and you're looking to deliver on the same technology infrastructures," explains Ms Opeke.

MainOne now has a presence in 10 countries in West Africa and the region's largest data centre, and it is rolling out fibre optic networks across urban areas, but internet coverage has a way to go before it can become consistent across the continent.

"We need to deploy the infrastructure. The private sector and government need to get really creative in trying to focus on reaching the population and coming up with solutions that do just that.

But no matter how hard the journey has been, Ms Opeke feels it has been worth it: "We have start-ups coming out of Nigeria starting to address local challenges, accessing international capital and build successful businesses and create jobs here, and that part is particularly rewarding."

By Mary-Ann Russon

BBC

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