Imagine you and a group of friends each contribute an amount of money and then appoint someone from among the group to be the treasurer and mandate the chosen person to keep the money. But instead of saving the money, the treasurer decides to stash the cash in numerous bank accounts distinct from the official or recommended bank account(s). This scenario is precisely what the now-famous Abacha loot resembles.
Abacha stashed a large chunk of Nigeria’s money in banks worldwide, yet it is still unclear, even to the Nigerian government, how much was concealed from 1993 to when the late military head of state passed away in 1998. The recent $23 million Abacha loot agreed to be repatriated to Nigeria by the United States government leaves much to be desired on how much was stashed away by the late military dictator and how it could have facilitated the development of the country. Some Nigerians have described the repatriation of these funds as the “gift that keeps giving” or the “generous donation that never stops” by Abacha.
The Abacha loot even poses more questions such as: How much has been recovered so far? What are the terms of the agreement between Nigeria and the repatriating countries? Finally, how does the Nigerian government utilise the recovered loot?
Meaning of Abacha loot
The Abacha loot simply refers to the money belonging to the Federal Republic of Nigeria that the late General Sani Abacha reportedly pilfered and stashed in foreign bank accounts across the world while he served as the country’s military Head of State. The funds are largely referred to as proceeds of corruption and illicit funds because the salary of the late Abacha as a military general was merely a peasant compared to the amount he is alleged to have taken from the country’s coffers and saved in foreign bank accounts.
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For emphasis, the late Abacha was a heavyweight in Nigeria’s military politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Born on 20 September 1943 in the ancient city of Kano, the late Abacha was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant of the Nigerian Army in 1963 and rose through the ranks.
It was when he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General in 1980 that he began to exert more influence and became a power broker in the military. He finally got to the apex of the country’s political leadership on 17 November 1993 after he used his position as Minister of Defence to sack the Interim National Government headed by the late Ernest Shonekan.
It was when he became the Head of State that Abacha was suspected of having exploited his position as he reportedly embezzled billions of Naira from the country’s treasury. He subsequently moved these funds to various bank accounts outside Nigeria, despite the global attention being focused on him due to his administration’s anti-democratic tendencies and extreme human rights violations.
After his death on 8 June 1998, the Nigerian state detected the level of siphoning done by Abacha and his cronies. Many Nigerians believe that Abacha’s regime encouraged corruption by stashing away illicit funds in foreign bank accounts. To date, it is difficult to know how much was plundered by Abacha from the country’s coffers. According to Transparency International, Abacha is estimated to have stolen up to $ 5 billion of Nigeria’s funds.
The transitional government of General Abdulsalam Abubakar began to learn the scale of the unprecedented embezzlement of funds, subsequently referred to as the Abacha loot. The preliminary report released in November 1998 by the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) inaugurated by the Abubakar regime claimed that the late head of state had instructed Ismaila Gwarzo, his national security adviser, to provide fake national security funding requests, which Abacha approved.
The funds were then reportedly sent by the Central Bank of Nigeria via traveller’s cheque to Gwarzo, who took them to Abacha’s house. Mohammed Sada, described as one of the closest friends of Mohammed Abacha, the dictator’s son, was said to have arranged with the late Head of State’s son to launder the money to offshore accounts.
Successive governments have, however, recovered some of the funds on behalf of the country. As of press time, the total amount of the Abacha loot that has either been returned or agreed to be repatriated to Nigeria is $3,651,100,000.
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List of recovered Abacha loot
As mentioned earlier, $3,651,100,000 (three billion, six hundred fifty-one million, one hundred thousand) is the amount of the Abacha loot that has been repatriated or set to be returned to Nigeria by foreign countries as of the time of writing this piece. The Abacha loot has, so far, been stashed in four countries, namely:
- Switzerland
- Bailiwick of Jersey (a self-governing Crown Dependency overseen by the United Kingdom)
- United States of America
- Liechtenstein
The timeline of how parts of the Abacha have been repatriated to Nigeria is chronicled below:
1998: $750 million
The regime of General Abdusalam Abubakar recovered the sum of $750 million from the Abacha family. The Nigerian government made this recovery just months after the late dictator’s death.
2000: $64 million
A year after it entered office following the restoration of democracy in Nigeria, President Olusegun Obasanjo‘s administration recovered the sum of $64 million from Switzerland. This was the start of the numerous repatriations negotiated by the Obasanjo administration.
2002: $1.2 billion
Two years after it made its first recovery, the Obasanjo administration got another $1.2 billion of the Abacha loot to be returned to the government’s coffers. It was the Abacha family which, once again, decided to make the repatriation after negotiating with the Federal Government.
2003: $160 million
In 2003, the Obasanjo administration secured the repatriation of $160 million from Jersey , a self-governing island which is part of the British Islands, although the United Kingdom legally oversees it.
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2003: $88 million
In the same year, 2003, the sum of $88 million is repatriated to Nigeria, courtesy of Switzerland. That was the second time in three years that the central European country returned monies that were said to have been illegally stashed in its country by the late Abacha.
2005: $461.3 million
Switzerland, once again, repatriated proceeds of the Abacha loot back to the Nigerian government. This time, the sum of $461.3 million was handed over to the Obasanjo administration by the Swiss government, making it the third tranche of funds returned by the country.
2006: $44.1 million
In 2006, Nigeria received another $44.1 million from Switzerland. This made it the fourth tranche repatriated by the Swiss government and handed over to the Obasanjo administration.
2014: $227 million
Eight years later, Nigeria was able to get another tranche of the Abacha loot repatriated to the country. This time, the Goodluck Jonathan administration recovered the sum of $227 million from Liechtenstein.
2018: $322 million
Another $322 million was repatriated to Nigeria from Switzerland under the current administration of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency in 2018. It was, however, said that the money was recovered by the Jonathan administration, which had earlier negotiated for its release.
2020: $311.7 million
A total of $311.7 million was repatriated from the US to Nigeria under the Buhari administration. It was the first tranche of the looted Abacha loot stashed in the North American country that was returned to Nigeria.
2022: $23 million
The US government, in August 2022, signed an agreement with the Federal Government to repatriate the sum of $23 million of the Abacha loot to Nigeria. According to Mary Leonard, the United States Ambassador to Nigeria, the latest return – known as the Abacha-5 – brings the total amount of money stolen by Abacha and his cronies which have been repatriated to Nigeria by the US alone to over $334.7 million.
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What does the government do with recovered Abacha loot?
It was reported that the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Switerzland and Nigeria indicated that the former purportedly stated that the recovered funds must be paid by the latter (the Obasanjo administration) directly to the bank account of poor Nigerians. In 2014, the Jonathan administration announced plans to invest the money in a sovereign wealth fund for the benefit of future generations.
However, question marks have been raised over how successive administrations have utilised the recovered Abacha loot. In July 2018, the House of Representatives insisted that there was no proper record of how the funds were spent by the Obasanjo and Jonathan administrations. It subsequently resolved to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the total Abacha loot recovered from 1998 to date; establish the sources and how the money was utilised.
Similarly, Abubakar Malami, the current Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a civil society organisation, dated 26 February 2020, said there were no records of the spending of Abacha loot recovered from 1999 to 2015.
The current Buhari administration has, however, said that the funds it has received on behalf of the country since 2018 have been utilised for Social Investment Projects. The projects include the Abuja-Kano Expressway, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and the Second Niger Bridge, which are all part of the ongoing Presidential Development Infrastructural Fund projects that are supervised by the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).
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