confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Time to make the corruption crackdowns pay
Blue Lines
It was Kenya's
graft-buster-in-chief in 2002, John
Githongo, who
observed that anti-corruption was good politics. And so it proved until
he stumbled on the wrong political skeletons in the closet. President
Mwai Kibaki did nothing to
defend Githongo, who fled abroad. Today,
he is back home, promoting grassroots political organisations while his
old enemies have faded into the shadows. Just as Githongo was chasing
down bribe-givers and takers and assorted contract ten-percenters,
Nuhu Ribadu was doing the same in Nigeria
and also winning plaudits. He
also had to leave the country in a hurry but is now back home with a
political career.
One big difference between Nigeria and Kenya is that President
Muhammadu Buhari was elected
because people thought him honest and
tough enough to tackle corruption; few Kenyans saw Uhuru Kenyatta as
leading a serious anti-corruption campaign. Now the two presidents'
legacy will depend on some success in stopping the rampant
criminalisation of the states over which they preside. Buhari still
scores highly in opinion polls for tackling corruption but is losing
support on other fronts because of fuel and power shortages and the
tumbling value of the naira. As the Auditor General in Abuja announces
that another US$16 billion is missing from the state oil company's
accounts, Buhari's government is under pressure to extract some
politically positive news from its crackdown on ill-gotten gains.
