Dr. John Campbell, America’s former ambassador to Nigeria
from May 2004 to July 2007, wrote a June 24 opinion article titled “Nigerian Media’s Unsubstantiated Claims that U.S. Agencies Investigating Corruption by Buhari's Inner Circle” for the Council on Foreign Relations (where he works
as a Senior Fellow for Africa policy studies) that was basically a puzzlingly
evidence-free whitewashing of Buhari and his corrupt cabal.
Campbell impeached the credibility of a Pointblanknews report that said the US State Department is probing Sabiu 'Tunde' Yusuf, Sarki
Abba, Mamman Daura, Ismaila Isa Funtua (and his son Abubakar Funtua) for money
laundering in the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom by claiming that
it is “rare for the Department of State or the Department of Justice to say
that there is an investigation underway, and neither has done so publicly.”
Campbell is a veteran of the US Department of State, so I
defer to his judgement on the credibility of the Pointblanknews report. But
he went beyond questioning the authenticity of the money laundering report to doing
outright image laundering for the cabal.
He said, “Sabiu 'Tunde' Yusuf is known
to be very rich, and Nigerian money laundering in the Gulf and the United
Kingdom is an old song. President Muhammadu Buhari appears to have little
personal interest in money, lives simply, and is rarely accused of personal
corruption. But that his inner circle is corrupt is a widely held trope in
southern Nigeria.”
That’s a curiously tendentious assertion. First, Sabiu “Tunde”
Yusuf was, until 2015, a poor recharge card seller. How did he become “known to
be very rich” just five years after being a personal assistant to Buhari, his
mother’s uncle? Campbell left that part out and made it seem like Yusuf, who is
only in his 30’s, had always been rich.
Yusuf unquestionably became rich from serving in Buhari’s
government. Since his legitimate monthly earning is lower than 350,000 naira
(which is less than $1,000), it is impossible for him to be “known to be very
rich” through means other than corruption.
Second, it is inaccurate that Buhari has “little personal
interest in money, lives simply, and is rarely accused of personal corruption.”
Campbell is merely regurgitating the pre-2015 propaganda Buhari’s campaign
caused to be circulated in Nigeria and abroad, but which is now the source of derision
in Nigeria in light of what people now know of Buhari.
It’s wholly untrue that Buhari lives simply. The first major
project Buhari executed upon becoming president in 2015 was to build a multi-million-naira
vanity helipad for his exclusive use in his hometown of Daura, which would be
useless after his presidency. Not even Goodluck Jonathan who got a lot of hell
from civil society groups for corruption built a helipad for himself in his
hometown of Otueke.
Additionally, Buhari’s penchant for going to London to treat
even his littlest illnesses (including an ear infection that had already been
treated in Nigeria), his high-priced sartorial excesses, and his fondness for extortionately
elaborate red-carpet ceremonies each time he leaves the country and returns to
it do not square with the profile of a
person who “lives simply.”
And contrary to
Campbell’s claim, Buhari has been accused of personal corruption since the
1970s. He was the subject of a popular song by the iconic Fela Anikulapo Kuti
because he couldn’t account for 2.8 billion naira of NNPC funds when he was
petroleum minister in the 1970s. He was also accused of stealing billions of
naira when he headed the Petroleum Trust Fund in the 1990s.
Of course, being accused of something isn’t synonymous with
being guilty of it. Nevertheless, although all of Nigeria’s past presidents and
heads of state have been accused of corruption, none has been convicted of it.
Not even the late General Sani Abacha whom Buhari said never stole any money
from Nigeria (but whose recovered “loot” is being perennially repatriated by foreign
banks and governments to Nigerian governments, including to Buhari’s regime)
has been convicted of corruption.
Buhari also has a history of personally lying in his
official capacity to defend the corruption of members of his inner circle. In
January 2017, for instance, Buhari signed a letter in his name to the Senate committee that investigated former
Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir David Lawal for fleecing
defenseless people who were internally displaced by Boko Haram terrorists and
exonerated him.
In the letter, Buhari
told three demonstrably obvious and easily falsifiable lies to defend his
appointee. In the midst of undeniable evidence against Lawal, Buhari was later
forced to eat humble pie and fire Lawal. But, although he was fired, he hasn’t
been convicted to this day. He was, in fact, chairman of Buhari’s reelection
campaign in Adamawa State.
Buhari also recalled, reinstated, and promoted a man by the
name of Abdulrasheed Maina who had been accused of embezzling billions of naira
belonging to pensioners for which he fled the country. After news of this scandal caused national
outrage, Buhari reversed it and pretended to be shocked by what had happened.
But a leaked memo to the late Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff to
Buhari, by then Head of Service, Winifred Oyo-Ita, showed that Buhari was in on
the fraud.
“I sought audience with His Excellency, Mr. President on
Wednesday, 11th October, 2017 after the FEC meeting where I briefed His
Excellency verbally on the wide-ranging implications of the reinstatement of
Mr. A. A. Maina, especially the damaging impact on the anti-corruption stance
of this administration,” the HoS’s memo said.
Finally, Campbell’s claim that notions of the eyewatering
corruption in Buhari’s inner circle are shared only by people in “southern
Nigeria” is both astonishingly mendacious and gratuitously divisive.
I am not a southern Nigerian, but I have called attention to
the corruption in Buhari’s inner circle in countless columns and social media
posts. Buba Galadima, another northerner and former Buhari protégé, has made
series of credible allegations of corruption against Buhari and his inner
circle.
Junaid Mohammed, a well-regarded Second Republic federal
legislator from Kano, has made numerous convincing accusations of corruption
against the Buhari regime and its honchos.
Even former Emir of
Kano Muhammad Sanusi II said in an August 24, 2016 lecture that the Buhari regime created a situation where
influential people could sit in their “garden and make billions through forex
market without sweat”—precisely the sort of charge being made against the Aso
Rock cabal that Campbell has chosen to defend without counter facts.
A vast multitude of
northerners on and off social media chatter endlessly about the stratospheric
corruption currently taking place in the Buhari regime. So to suggest that accusations of corruption
against members of Buhari’s kitchen cabinet are animated only by unthinking
southern regional animus against northerners is outrageous prevarication that
is beneath contempt.
More than southerners, northerners see previously dirt-poor
people from their region building glitzy mansions and living large after
getting appointments in— or being closely aligned to people in— Buhari’s inner
circle. They know legitimate earnings from government jobs are not sufficient
to fund and sustain the sybaritic lavishness of Buhari’s appointees.
Campbell obviously knows very little about northern Nigeria.
For instance, in a March 27, 2020 article for the CFR, he wrote that Abba Kyari was an “Islamic
scholar” because the title “Mallam” is often prefixed to his name!
Campbell doesn’t know enough about northern Nigeria to know
that “Mallam” has evolved to a mere courtesy title for a man, any man, and functions
as an alternative for “Mr.” Perhaps, it is too much to expect a person who
thinks people who prefix “Mallam” to their names are Islamic clerics to know
that northern Nigerians also rail against the endemic corruption in Buhari’s
inner circle.
It is troubling that Campbell used the possible inauthenticity of the claim that members of Buhari’s inner circle are being probed by the State Department to weaken or dismiss the credible allegations of corruption against Buhari and his cabal.
