Nigerian loot in London
The current edition of the British magazine, Private Eye, contains “Abuja on Thames,” a story about the outlandish wealth in England of Paul Ogwuma, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who served under the governments of Generals Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar. Abacha has become the international symbol for kleptocracy, and […]
The current edition of the British magazine, Private Eye, contains “Abuja on Thames,” a story about the outlandish wealth in England of Paul Ogwuma, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who served under the governments of Generals Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar.
Abacha has become the international symbol for kleptocracy, and the magazine affirms that Mr. Ogwuma and his wife have “amassed a £33m British property empire.” Anna Ogwuma now owns or controls a network of 15 British companies.
Between 2002 and 2017, her companies were used for 20 separate property purchases ranging from commercial sites in the north of England to luxury apartments in west London.
The story is eerily similar to that of Diezani Alison-Madueke, Nigeria’s former Minister of Petroleum Resources, who swore in London in November 2015 she owned none of the wealth she was alleged to have amassed in office.
But in an assets-forfeiture proceeding, the United States called her bluff, demonstrating that in London alone, Alison-Madueke owned at least six parcels of luxury real estate.
Private Eye points out that although Anna “had no obvious source of wealth of her own,” her most valuable properties were either bought or remortgaged with loans from Lloyds Bank and Barclays Bank which had “handled $170m of Abacha’s ill-gotten wealth” since 2015. Somehow, those inconsistencies never prompted any questions about the source of her money.
It also recalls that her husband, now 86, was eventually forced to cough up $10m personally, and notes that the old man also served for one year under Abubakar, “whose plundering was arguably even more intense [than Abacha’s]…”
The Ogwuma story is not an unusual Nigeria story, as London is the choice of destination for many a Nigerian who has money to spend, particularly money with the CBN kind of background.
In 2006, for instance, 234NEXT.com reported that another former CBN governor had set up a $2.1m home in London. That was Charles Soludo, who had joined the Olusegun Obasanjo government from teaching in a university a few years earlier.
Soludo, the newspaper said, bought his new home in the London suburb of Brondesbury Park, and then registered one of his children in a school where the annual tuition was £25,000.
Back in Nigeria, he built a country home in his village in Anambra State, as well as-bless him–a state of the art hospital/diagnostic centre in honour of his mother. In Abuja, he owned another expensive mansion: the official residence of the CBN governor he had somehow purchased for just N200m.
But if a Nigerian Big Man wants to confirm he has arrived, London is always the place. It is the first and principal stop of presidents, governors, Ministers, Directors, permanent secretaries, commissioners-along with their wives, lawyers, money-launderers, mistresses and children. Former Bayelsa, Plateau and Delta governors Dipreye Alamieyeseigha, Joshua Dariye and James Ibori underlined this point.
The investments benefit the host country, so the British do not object…really. Otherwise, it might be remembered that in April 2000, over $300m million Abacha money was reported to have been found in England. One year later, in April 2001, Britain’s Financial Services Authority, revealed that 23 London banks had handled $1.3bn belonging to Abacha’s family and friends.
That same month, Britain’s judicial authorities ordered some of the world’s largest banks to freeze accounts belonging to Abacha. Later in the year, a High Court asked the government to help Nigeria trace over $1bn in Abacha loot. There has been little advancement in Britain since then, and practically nothing repatriated to Nigeria.
Still, I presume The Eye published its Ogwuma story because it is a good story. The Ogwumas can challenge it in court if they wish, but I doubt they will.
Nor will Nigeria seek to win back one penny of that money. Because despite all the bragging by one leader after another-President Muhammadu Buhari being the loudest-the anti-corruption hoax in Nigeria is defined and denied by relationships.
For instance, Nigerian leaders tacitly understand that no leader embarrasses his predecessors. The Abacha and Obasanjo exception happened only because Abacha had jailed Obasanjo; as a result, Obasanjo was going to chase his ghost beyond the ends of the earth into hell.
And note that Buhari has spent four years not chasing Olusegun Obasanjo around, either, despite daily criticism of the PDP that Obasanjo built and oiled.
Nor is he chasing his immediate predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, despite admitting Jonathan’s alleged use of illegal “off-budget” requests. In his only chat with the media early in his administration, Buhari said: “See, the former president wrote to the governor of Central Bank and said ‘give N40 billion to so, so and so, and then he gives account.’”
And notice, also, that despite video evidence showing Kano State governor Abdullahi Ganduje allegedly receiving bribes he still enjoyed Buhari’s support in his re-election campaign. For Buhari, family cannot be corrupt.
And remember also that Ogwuma served in the same government with Buhari, who has serially affirmed Buhari didn’t loot Nigeria. Buhari cannot open an Ogwuma file without contradicting himself.
Now this: Nigerians will remember that seven years ago, Ibori pleaded guilty in a British court to money-laundering and conspiracy to defraud and was subsequently jailed.
But did you know that in that same week, Libya successfully recovered a £10 million mansion in a London suburb that had belonged to Saadi Gaddafi, a son of its former leader Muammar Gaddafi? The High Court ruled that the property rightfully belonged to Libya because it had been purchased with diverted Libyan state funds.
In a similar case, Wikileaks 10 years ago revealed a $10m mansion owned by former Nigeria president Umaru Yar’Adua in central London and purchased when he was a governor of Katsina State. Yar’adua had made a big show of his declaration of assets in 2007 upon assuming the presidency but did not declare that property. However, a United States diplomatic cable confirmed its ownership in 2008, Yar’adua’s daughter, Zainab saying that two of her siblings lived in it during their studies.
By coincidence, another citizen of Katsina would assume leadership of Nigeria years later, and two of his children would also attend a university in England and live in a home the ownership of which has not been ascertained, providing a stern test of integrity.
Beyond the Ogwumas and Soludos, everyone knows that London and its suburbs is littered with property owned by Nigerians, many of them dubiously. In the past few years, ClampK, (The Committee for Legislation Against Money laundering in Properties by Kleptocrats), has been organizing Kleptocracy Tours in support of the global fight against corruption and kleptocracy. Officials of the Nigeria’s High Commission do not attend.
Previously, when I had thought Buhari was serious, I challenged his government to use the whistleblower initiative to compile a list of the most prominent of these dubious properties through Nigerians in the country. I believe the fear of inconvenient relationships in high places makes the idea an outrageous one.
But it is instructive to remember how an international magazine summed up Jonathan months after he left office: “An ineffectual buffoon who let politicians and their cronies fill their pockets with impunity.”
It is the kind of epitaph Buhari can avoid but may not.
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