PERSPECTIVE

The mystery of the Abacha billions

Mohammed Haruna

Among the controversies that have surrounded the three-year murder trial of Alhaji Mohammed Abacha, the son of the late General Sani Abacha, probably the greatest controversy has been about the so-called Abacha billions. General Abacha’s five-year tenure as military head of state has been widely regarded as arguably the most venal in the country’s history. Himself, some members of his family, notably, his son Mohammed, and some of his friends, ministers and aides were alleged to have collectively and singly looted the country’s treasury.

It is in interesting and instructive that the first person to lend some credence to these allegations was the general’s minister of finance and one of his closest confidants, Mr Anthony Ani. A few months after the general’s mysterious death in June, 1998, Ani, then no longer a minister, called a press conference at his home in Lagos, during which he told a somewhat astonished world that his boss had repeatedly ignored his advice against the withdrawal of huge sums of money in both local and foreign currency from the Central Bank of Nigeria, by Abacha’s National Security Adviser, Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo. All told, said Ani, Gwarzo had, among other withdrawals, shipped over 1.3 billion dollars abroad over a period of nearly two years. In an attempt to wash his hands off this venality, Ani boasted that he had helped the successive regime of General Abubakar Abdulsalami recover 700 million dollars.

Unfortunately for Ani, his attempt at self-exculpation backfired, as it soon turned out that he too was a beneficiary of Abacha’s alleged venality. It turned out that Ani himself had accepted what he said were gifts of 30,000,000 Deutch Mark and another 3,000,000 dollars from Abacha, “gifts” which he eventually returned in the course of the investigations into the Abacha billions by General Abubakar’s regime.

Actually Ani’s refund was part of a broader deal between Abubakar’s regime and the Abacha family to return 50,000,000 dollars to the national treasury in exchange of foreclosing further investigations by the Federal Government into the Abacha billons. However, whereas the Abubakar regime delivered on its side of the deal, the Abacha family did not redeem its promissory note of 50,000,000 dollars up to the time General Abubakar handed over power to President Obasanjo on May 29, 1999.

That was to renew the travails of the Abacha family over the Abacha billions. It is possible that even if the family had fulfilled its own side of the deal with Abubakar’s regime, President Obasanjo would still have called it off. First, given the quantum of the money involved, many people, including several newspapers, saw the deal as grossly unfair to the Nigerian taxpayer. Second, it was apparent, even from Obasanjo inaugural speech, that he was in a vengeful frame of mind over his apparent humiliation by Abacha, and by extension, the north.

The fact, however, that the Abacha family reneged on its side of the deal with Abubakar’s regime made it a lot easier for Obasanjo to call it off altogether. In the course of re-negotiating the deal, Abacha’s son, Mohammed, was arrested and charged, along with others, with complicity in the murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the first wife of Chief MKO Abiola, whom Abacha had jailed for demanding the revalidation of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential elections which the chief seemed set to win. In time, Mohammed’s detention and trial was perceived by the public as the federal government’s bargaining chip in the re-negotiations over the return of the Abacha billions. The Oputa panel, which Obasanjo set up to examine cases of human rights abuse going back to 1966, lent some credence to this public perception of Mohammed’s detention and trial, by recommending a “political” resolution to the trial. Many people interpreted that as suggesting a money-for-freedom deal.

The Federal Government, whose idea it probably was, to begin with, was soon talking to the Abacha family on that basis. Late last year, President Obasanjo, himself, revealed that his government had reached a deal with the family for its return of over 1.5 billion dollars in exchange for allowing it to keep 100,000,000 dollars of the Abacha billions. This was subsequently confirmed by one of Abacha family’s expatriate lawyers in an interview with the BBC. Obasanjo did not say whether a “political” solution to Mohammed’s trial was part of the deal, but there was widespread public perception that it was.

However, even as public opinion was beginning to inveigh against the deal for allowing the Abacha family to keep 100,000,000 dollars, Hajiya Maryam, Abacha’s wife and Mohammed’s mother, came out to deny that there was ever any such deal. Mohammed, speaking from behind prison walls, soon joined his mother in denying the deal.

Mohammed was released from detention recently, following repeated interventions by the authorities in his home state of Kano, including its much-respected emir, Alhaji Ado Bayero. Their interventions had followed the recent Supreme Court judgement that Mohammed had no case to answer in the matter of Hajiya Kudirat’s murder. In it’s ruling the Supreme Court had in fact said Mohammed was being persecuted not prosecuted.

In freedom, Mohammed has since reiterated his denial of any freedom-for-money deal with the Federal Government. His release from prison custody, he said, was unconditional. This, however, has been denied by the Kano State Governor Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who told the BBC recently that the Abacha family had accepted to return nearly two billion dollars in exchange for Mohammed’s freedom. Obasanjo, himself, told a group of journalists the other day that “the papers were signed by both parties, but the exchange of documents were not carried out and it was on that point that they abrogated the deal we had with them”. Obasanjo did not say why the deal that had been signed and sealed was not delivered.

However, the issue in all these claims and counter-claims really is not whether there has been a deal or not. The issue is whether or not there is a prima facie case of venality against the Abacha family. Here it is instructive that Mrs Abacha, herself, has not really denied the existence of the so-called Abacha loot. Her husband, she told a newspaper recently, did not loot the public treasury, but merely “(kept) the monies for Nigeria.” On the advice of several of his more experienced African counterparts, she said, her husband had kept some of the monies in Nigeria to avoid their being frozen by hostile Western governments. However, financial regulators in United Kingdom alone, have since confirmed that banks in London had handled about 1.3 billion dollar transactions on behalf of the family and friends of Abacha. These, presumably, are the bit of Nigeria’s money that Abacha still took a chance to keep abroad, going by Mrs Abacha’s newspaper interview in question.

In the circumstance, the honourable thing for the Abacha family to do is to return the money, deal or no deal. All men of goodwill should put pressure on the family to do so. The attempt by some leading Northerners to hide behind the extended detention of Mohammed and put a spin on the whole episode by turning the Abacha family into a hero-of-sorts who are merely being persecuted by a President Obasanjo out on vengeance mission, can only detract from the moral integrity of the religious values they claim to cherish. Obasanjo may indeed be on a revenge mission, but the only way for the true friends of the Abacha family to regain the moral initiative in the whole sordid episode is to quietly acknowledge that the family had done a grave wrong to this country by its venality and return the money whether or not there was a deal.

It has been argued that the Abacha family has been picked upon unfairly simply because the general is no more. Abacha, goes this argument, is, after all, not the only leader to have allegedly looted our treasury. All this is probably true, but it is an argument for investigating and prosecuting any leader suspected of looting the treasury and not an argument for leaving well alone because someone against who there is apparently a cast-iron case of venality is no more. The logic of this argument is that unless you can catch all thieves, you should never jail any thief. Obviously this is reducing logic to its absurdity.

If the Abacha family persists in its refusal to return the Abacha billions, the Federal Government will be left with no choice but to take its case to the courts. President Obasanjo has said he has been reluctant to pursue this line of action because it will be long and costly and there is no guarantee that it will end in the Federal Government’s favour. The president’s concern is legitimate. An article in the October 4, 2001 edition of The Guardian of London, spoke about the Abachas hiring “dozens of heavyweight lawyers in every jurisdiction where the family and their associates have been pursued.” Such heavyweight lawyers include “two leading commercial QCs” (Queen’s Council, the British equivalent of our Senior Advocates of Nigeria), Gordon Pollock and Lawrence Cohen and another “two of the City’s biggest solicitors”, S.J. Berwin and Dechert. The family was also said to have hired Clare Montgomery, also a QC, who once represented General Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Prince Jefri, the brother of the Sultan of Brunei, who was accused of embezzling billions of dollars of his country’s money.

According to The Guardian edition in question, the Abachas were estimated by that time to have spent more than 12 million dollars in lawyer’s fees world-wide, 8 million of which had gone to lawyers in Britain.

In the circumstance, it is understandable that Obasanjo should be leery of litigating his way to getting the so-called Abacha billions back to the country. Even then he was wrong to continue detaining Mohammed Abacha once the Supreme court ruled, rightly or wrongly, that Mohammed had no case to answer in the trial of the murder of Hajiya Kudirat. Mohammed’s continued detention after the Supreme Court ruling smacked of blackmail.

If the Abachas would renege on its deal, the Federal Government will have to make up its mind either to pursue the matter in court, if it has the stomach for a long and costly litigation with all its uncertainties, or it should leave the Abachas alone with their conscience and their God. The Government should never use any underhanded means to get back those billions. He who goes to equity, as the saying goes, should do so with clean hands.

From Clinton to OBJ

September 24, former U.S. President, Bill Clinton, was in Abuja to give a speech on “Democratization and Economic Development”. Reading the text of that lecture in between the lines, I thought it contained a number of wonderful pieces of advice to our own president on how to be a true democrat. If only our all-knowing president will heed Clinton’s words! Below are just three of the former U.S. president’s advice.

“The essence of democracy is not just winning powers legitimately, it is also knowing when to let go”.
“Before you can do good elsewhere, you must be good at home”.
“No one has the whole truth. No one is all-wise, no one is all-knowing. No one is immune from the temptations of power. No one.

If only our president will let go his vengeance mission; if only he will focus on doing good at home instead of seeking for it abroad; if only he will he will come down from his moral high-horse of dismissing each and every alternate view as evil; if only…