Amin Buba Dibal
It is no news that corruption has been the bane of development in Africa. Leone Ndikumana, writing in his book “The Trial of Capital Flight from Africa: The Takers and the Enablers,” posited that from 1970 to 2018, African countries lost over $2 trillion through corrupt capital flight, which is almost the annual gross domestic product of all sub-Saharan countries.
Every year, Africa loses nearly USD 60 billion. With some specific examples, the book pointed to the loss of $100 billion in capital flight from 1986 – 2018 by Angola and South Africa lost $ 329 billion from 1970 – -2018. On another note, Nigeria has lost $530 billion since independence in 1960.
The resultant impact of public corruption and the capital fight in Africa has manifested in failed service delivery across basic social service sectors on the continent.
In Nigerian for example, citizens provide water for themselves even in state capitals and the federal capital territory by drilling boreholes per house, forming and funding vigilante groups to provide security for their neighborhoods, largely catering to medical services in private health facilities with no insurance, regulatory agencies are weak to protect interest of citizens, pot-holes cover almost all the road network in the country, kidnapping prevalent in all regions and the entire estimated 230 million people have access to only 3500 megawatts of electricity.
So basically, citizens do not practically understand or see what the government exists to do especially in the spirit of social contract.
The gradual slide to failed-state indices in many African countries is principally because citizens and other social actors are weak in their investment to ensure accountability and lack of an ethical conscience and patriotic driven philosophy amongst leaders, a departure from for example what we have in Dubai and Rwanda where despite absolute power at the disposal of the leaders, the governments are disposed to a benevolent orientation to governance and the development of their nations.
Improvement in the quality of governance in contemporary human history except in extremely few cases like in Dubai have all been achieved based on robust social engagement between leaders and citizens in a manner that accountability is demanded and secured.
When citizens are docile in a democracy as in many African democracies especially where you have leaders perpetuate themselves in power like in Equatorial Guinea, Cameroun, Benin Republic, and Uganda, evidence has shown corruption and the destruction of democratic tenants are likely to continue for an unforeseeable future.
There is no evidence of the reversal of any evil in human society by just wishful thinking and lamentation but active engagement of challenges towards resolution. History will remember those on the side of those who have contributed to combating corruption in Africa and engendering development which I believe the diaspora has the opportunity to take in this context.
The diaspora could do more to mitigate corruption and contribute to Africa’s development, given their comparative advantage over their kinsmen back home in terms of financial resources, access to information and technology, contacts and networks, and a wider platform of influence.
Leaders and citizens are-like are tired of the trajectory our nations are leading due to corruption, thus governments across the continent have established agencies to confront the menace like the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, National Public Prosecution Authority of Rwanda, and the Nigeria Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to mention few.
African countries numbering 15 are members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), committed to open governance which empowers civil society to demand accountability and thus foster development. Furthermore, in Nigeria for example, there are also other agencies like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and policies like the Whistle Blowing Policy and legislation like the Anti-corruption Act and Laundering Prohibition Act.
The effectiveness of these provisions is not part of the discourse here. In September 2024, the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration launched its anti-corruption strategy with support from the International IDEA.
Corruption and its impact is succinctly postulated by the United Nations Convention on Anti-Corruption (UNCAC) as follows:
“Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life, and allows organized crime, terrorism, and other threats to human security to flourish”.
This evil phenomenon is found in all countries—big and small, rich and poor—but it is in the developing world that its effects are most destructive. Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice, and discouraging foreign aid and investment. Corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development”.
Financial corruption poses a threat to the global democratic governance system as seen in increasing cross-national corruption connections, as COVID-19 was to the global health system. Thus, there is a need for renewed investment to undermine the prevalence of corruption in the global system with the support of global good governance mechanisms.
The Africa Diaspora has played and still contributing to national development across the continent in many ways, making remittances to the tune of over $100 billion in 2023.
For Nigeria, it’s about $20 billion annually. Furthermore, the Diaspora has benevolently funded the construction of health facilities, and conducted free health outreaches, supporting millions of family’s welfare, innovation, and entrepreneurial growth.
These being very important and well appreciated, much needed to be done specifically in terms of rising to the monster of corruption that is making the diaspora suffer and toil to send money back home to support needs which ordinarily should have been provided as part of social services by governments to the people if not for the massive looting of treasurers of governments by those holding offices of authority in trust for the benefit of all citizens.
There is a need for the diaspora to this time around focus on confronting corruption because it is the most strategic, and has multiplier effect on enhancing the welfare of citizens, the growth of our economies, and saving you from the pressure from home to send money for issues that are man-made due to lack of an accountable politics and governance.
Historically, the diaspora and the Western-educated elite have played important roles in independence nationalism and the growth of better societies across the world using various legal means and valid norms in democracy.
For Africa, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ahmadu Bello of Nigeria, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Modibo Keita of Mali, Patrice Lumumba, Moktar Ould-Daddah of Mauritania, Ahmed Sekou-Toure to mention few have had diaspora and or western education influence which they have deployed towards the progress of their homelands.
Against this background, though the context of some of the nationalist movements associated with our nation’s founding fathers was different and some of the strategies deployed are now archaic, there are valid democratic provisions and international instruments for utilization to combat the menace of corruption that has held back the development of our continent. In this regard, I wish to recommend the following engagement strategies to the organized African diaspora for consideration:
The Lobby: The African diaspora could explore the idea of forming or reinventing a lobby with the mandate to pursue the interest of mitigating corruption and enhancing good governance across the continent. Lobbying from the records of other lobby groups has proven to be a veritable mechanism for influencing government policies, in this case of the Western democracies towards other countries.
In the USA for example, the Jewish Lobby, Cuban-American lobby, African-American and Armenian-American lobby, and other pressure groups advocating for other interests like the Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a think tank in Washington DC could be pillars of inspiration for a renewed investment in utilizing such mechanism for confronting corruption in Africa.
Lobby groups have succeeded in their various focus, famous of them is the Jewish Lobby, which has for example succeeded in securing 0.1 percent of the US budget (since in the 70s and increasing) in aid to addressing its particular problem of security threat. For the African Diaspora, the lobby should focus on mitigating corruption and capital flight.
The ICC: The organized diaspora could explore engaging the international judicial system especially the International Criminal Court over the need to expand the scope of some of its jurisdictions.
The focus here can for example be around the need for a review of Part 2 of the Rome Statute on “Jurisdiction Admissibility and Applicability of the Law” and specifically Article 7 on the types of issues that constitute “crime against humanity” to include grand embezzlement of public funds that has the potentials of affecting millions of people in terms of deprivation of social services and welfare.
This recommendation envisages the potential of creating permissibility for organized groups like the diaspora to file charges at the court on corruption against the masses of a country’s population when public funds are siphoned exceeding some threshold and or trafficked abroad.
The International Convention on anti-corruption: The diaspora could explore engaging the provisions of international agencies with a mandate around anti-corruption such as the UNCAC, especially in terms of its focus on, “criminalization” and “Asset recovery” to respond to the peculiar nature of corruption in developing countries.
This could, for example, include demand for revising provisions around clauses on “facilitation of peer-to-peer information exchange and informal cooperation” and “cooperation and assistance …to identify, trace, freeze, preserve, seize, confiscate, manage and return stolen assets” by empowering organized diaspora organizations to access and utilize such data and information to demand accountability at many levels and deter the prevalence of public corruption.
Civic education: Despite the number of media stations across Africa and global social media platforms, the population of the continent remains largely uninformed in terms of understanding the deep conceptual meaning of concepts like a social contract, accountability, citizens’ sovereignty, and social justice.
This is why you would see our population in many African countries revere and nearly worship persons holding public office when mediocre services are commissioned. Thus, the diaspora could consider funding intensive media civic education and education curricular review around governance accountability, Social Justice, and the implications of corruption to livelihood and development at a very wide level sustained over long periods. When citizens are empowered with information about their rights, responsibilities, and privileges it could go a long way in enhancing democracy and good governance.
Another second aspect in this strategy could be sponsoring and or funding current investigative journalism activities to identify and expose grand corrupt practices and their implications for development.
This resonates in principle for example with the Nigeria Whistle-Blowing Policy and OGP provisions, for the latter, many African countries are signatories.
Some excellent and compelling examples of this practice are the BBC Africa Eye Documentary series for example like the one titled “Congo’s Missing Millions”, aired in 2022; and a recent documentary on Aljazeera TV on the corrupt practices of the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh titled “The Ministers’ Millions”, aired in October 2024.
On the cultural front, naming and shaming is a normative practice in the African tradition to deter socially ill practices. Investments in this should be aired on platforms with a wide reach of target populations. At the right time, investment in civic education and exposing corrupt practices by public officials will yield the needed result for accountability and good governance.
In conclusion, it is important to recognize that the prevalence of financial corruption by public officials can pose a threat to the growth of democracy, encourage military coup d’état across Africa, and facilitate the emergence of socialist movements.
It is unethical and a misnomer in the world of the 21st century, over two hundred years after the fall of absolute monarchies in Europe, the archetypes of absolute rule and the collapse of communism in the USSR and Western Europe to keep witnessing mostly the worst characters of our societies be allowed to steal millions and billions of dollars just because of occupying a position of trust and nothing legally happens to them nationally or internationally.
Why should the “civilized” global social system with its clamour of reason, technological advancement, social justice, and human rights allow the perpetration of grand financial corruption by individuals in privileged public positions of authority to succeed in stealing and its impact destroys powers of regulatory agencies, the welfare, livelihoods, and hopes of millions of people?
