The testimony of Nuhu Ribadu, former Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of Nigeria, before the House Financial Services Committee in May 2009 is a stirring call for addressing corruption in all of Africa and the fatal effects that allowing corruption to continue is having on the continent. Here are some excerpts:
Today, after one civil war, seven military regimes, and three botched attempts at building real democracy [since gaining independance in 1960], there is one connecting factor in the failure of all attempts to govern Nigeria: corruption....
The African Union has reported that corruption drains the region of some $140 billion a year, which is about 25% of the continent's official GDP.... On a regional dimension, it is estimated that some $20 billion leaves Africa annually through the illicit export of money extorted from development loan contracts. This money is deposited in overseas banks by a network of politicians, civil servants and businessmen. This figure is now roughly equal to the entire amount of aid from the US to Sub‐Saharan Africa every year....
I have always held the belief that the laws needed to check these problems often already exist; what is lacking is the culture of enforcement. Enforcement blossoms only where there is the necessary political will, and this political will must be strong at the very top....
The UK’s Commission for Africa estimates that the assets stolen from the continent and held in foreign bank accounts amount to $93 billion. If Africa can succeed in tracing and repatriating such stolen wealth, the next chapter in the story may truly turn a new page, and the days of aid dependency can start to wane....
I urge you to view the fight against corruption as the ultimate humanitarian effort, for surely there is no stronger chain to shackle the poor to their lot. Corruption may have taken some shots at us, but what it is doing to ordinary Nigerians every day is far worse and far more fatal.
When corruption is king, there is no accountability of leadership and no trust in authority. Society devolves to the basic units of family and self, to the baser instincts of getting what you can when you can, because you don’t believe anything better will ever come along. And when the only horizon is tomorrow, how can you care about the kind of nation you are building for your children and your grandchildren?