For decades, endemic corruption in Africa has had a manly face. Names like Umaru Dikko, a former Minister in Nigeria, Equatoguinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his family, the deposed Bongo ‘dynasty’ of Gabon, first led by Omar Bongo then his son Ali Bongo; the late Mobutu Sese Seko of former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and the late Sani Abacha of Nigeria were infamous for and synonymous with corruption. Their faces and families personified the canker on the continent.
For instance, Dikko, who served as a Minister of Transport under the administration of his brother-in-law, Shegu Shagari in Nigeria, was accused by the Muhammadu Buhari-led military junta, after Shagari’s overthrow in 1983, of stashing about $6 billion of the country’s oil profits in overseas accounts. Topping the junta’s list of corrupt officials who were to be dealt with by the regime, Dikko fled to London from where he freely criticised the junta back home, according to BBC files. A joint attempt by the Nigerian junta and Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to kidnap Dikko and transport him back to Nigeria in a big crate failed, as the proper documentation that would have ensured that the cargo could not be inspected was not provided. Customs officials who were alerted of the kidnapping, thus, foiled it at the airport.
In like manner, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Africa’s longest-serving ruler, who has led his country since 1979 when he overthrew his uncle, is alleged to have a personal fortune of over $600 million. Together with his son, Teodoro “Theodorin” Nguema Obiang (the vice-president), the Mbasongos are alleged to have laundered over $300 million, according to Bantu Page. In 2020, a French court of appeal found the son of the president guilty of embezzling state funds to support his lavish lifestyle and was fined $33 million. According to the BBC, between 2000 and 2011, Obiang acquired a collection of luxury assets and properties in France, including the €25m Avenue Foch mansion. The court also found that he owned 18 luxury cars, artwork, jewellery and designer fashion. In 2016, Swiss prosecutors seized 11 luxury cars belonging to Obiang. In 2019, the cars – among them Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bentleys and Rolls Royce – were sold at an auction for about $27 million.
Also, the Bongo dynasty, which ruled Gabon for 56 years, is alleged to have amassed some $1 billion, mostly secreted in overseas accounts and assets. Ali Bongo, who was overthrown in 2023 military coup, took over from his late father Omar Bongo. Together they ruled the small oil-rich country for 56 years, during which they enriched themselves with public funds.
Others such as the late Sani Abacha, is alleged to have stashed between $4 and $5 billion in Swiss and other foreign accounts and assets. So far, the Swiss authorities have returned $752 million, $321 million in two tranches, while the US authorities have tenaciously held on to $480 million stashed away in their domain. The corrupt proceeds were traced by officials upon the orders of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Abacha ruled from 1993 until his death in 1998 at the age of 54. Most of the money was taken to his house in truckloads from the central bank, from where he would normally request huge sums under the guise of security operations. Among the stolen funds traces was some $508m found in the Abacha family’s many Swiss bank accounts, which was sent from Switzerland to Nigeria between 2005 and 2007. By 2018, the amount Switzerland had returned to Nigeria had reached more than $1billion. One BBC account said in June 2014, Liechtenstein repatriated $277 million of funds stashed away by Abacha, to Nigeria. Also, in May 2020, $308 million held in accounts based in the Channel Island of Jersey was also returned to Nigeria. This only came after the Nigerian authorities agreed that the money would be used, specifically, to help finance the construction of the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and the Abuja-Kano road, the BBC reported at the time. Some countries are yet to repatriate more of such stolen funds to Nigeria, including the UK ($30 million), France ($144 million) and Jersey ($18 million). In total, $2.4 billion of funds stolen by the late Abacha, have been returned to Nigeria.
Another late corrupt African leader, Mobutu Sese Seko, a former president of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), who died on September 7, 1997, in Rabat, managed to stash away about $5 billion in a Swiss Bank account, which was almost the same amount of debt in Zaire as of 1983, according to Face2faceAfrica.com.
And then there is Jacob Zuma, former President of South Africa, who faced prosecution for 16 charges of corruption relating to a multi-billion-dollar arms deal. The case centred on a 30-billion rand ($2.5bn; £1.7bn) deal to modernise the country’s defence in the late 1990s, a BBC reported in 2018 said.
The charges – which Mr Zuma denies – include counts of fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Mr Zuma, who was 75 years old at the time, was forced to resign as president.
Additionally, Sudan convicted and sentenced its former president, Omar al-Bashir, to two years’ imprisonment in December 2019 for corruption and money laundering charges, following the discovery of cash in excess of $130 million in his residence when he was deposed.
In The Gambia too, more than $11m (£8.8m; €10.3m) went missing from the coffers of the state following the departure of long-time leader Yahya Jammeh, who clung to power for 22 years and departed in 2017. Former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by the 2011 uprising, also went on trial accused of embezzling funds meant for the renovation of presidential palaces to do up his personal properties. Mr Mubarak and his sons were found guilty of embezzling more than $17m over eight years. He was sentenced to three years in prison while his sons, Gamal and Alaa, got four years each. Mubarak’s North African colleague, Ben Ali of Tunisia, who also suffered an overthrow in 2011, the beginning of the Arab Spring, fled with his wife to Saudi Arabia but a Tunisian court sentenced them in absentia to 35 years in prison for embezzlement and misuse of public funds. At his trial, the prosecution said $27 million in jewels and public money had been found at one of his mansions.
So, these faces, among others, were those that put Africa on the international map as a continent riddled with corrupt leaders. However, Africa appears to be taking on a totally feminine face of corruption judging from recent history.
Isabel dos Santos facing several corruption probes
Her father was Jose Eduardo dos Santos, president of Angola for 38 years. After stepping down from office in 2017, which surprised many, dos Santos’ ordained successor, former Defence Minister João Lourenço, turned his anti-corruption guns on his mentor’s progeny. Mr Lourenço first jailed dos Santos’ son, Zenu, for five years for fraud after $500m (£378m) was transferred from the National Bank of Angola to an account in the UK, the BBC reported at the time. Isabel has also been banned from entering the US for “involvement in significant corruption”, according to the US State Department. In 2020, the BBC reported on leaked documents that revealed how she had made her fortune through allegedly exploiting her own country and corruption. At the time, Ms Dos Santos said the allegations against her were entirely false and that there was a politically motivated witch hunt by the Angolan government.
In December 2023, the Angolan billionaire lost a legal battle in London’s High Court to prevent a freeze on up to £580 million ($733 million) of her assets. She had been sued by Angolan telecommunications company Unitel over loans made to a company she controlled, Unitel International Holdings (UIH), incorporated in the Netherlands, the BBC reported. Court documents show Unitel accused dos Santos of procuring over £365 million ($461 million) in loans at below commercial value from the company in 2012 and 2013 for UIH and her “own personal benefit,” according to the BBC. At the time, dos Santos was serving on Unitel’s board of directors and the company is reportedly seeking damages of £580 million arising from decisions she made while in the role. The court heard UIH ceased paying interest on the loans in early 2020. ICIJ’s 2020 Luanda Leaks investigation revealed how she and her allies benefited from lucrative deals in oil, diamonds, telecommunications, banking and real estate under her father’s rule.
At one of the hearings, Unitel asked the court for a worldwide freezing order on dos Santos’ assets, which a judge granted, according to Reuters. The judge also ordered dos Santos to disclose her assets — including properties worth £33.5 million ($42 million) in the United Kingdom and more than £86.5 million ($95 million) in Monaco and Dubai — to Unitel by next month, BBC reported. In 2022, Angolan President Joao Lourenco, José Eduardo dos Santos’ hand-picked successor, nationalised Unitel months after Angolan officials seized dos Santos’ shares, effectively ending her connection to the company.
Dos Santos denies wrongdoing in the London case and said the allegations stem from a political feud arising from her attempts to “root out corruption” when she led Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company.
ICIJ previously found that hours after Lourenco fired dos Santos from her position as head of Sonangol, millions were transferred from the corporation to a Dubai-based company controlled by an associate of dos Santos.
A Dutch court also ruled that forged documents and director mismanagement enabled dos Santos to illegally siphon 52.6 million euros ($57.5 million) from Sonangol via Dutch private limited companies.
Dos Santos is already subject to asset freezes in several countries, including Angola and Portugal. ICIJ’s Luanda Leaks investigation was based on a trove of 715,000 documents including emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts that revealed how dos Santos built a business empire worth an estimated $2 billion over two decades. The Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, an organisation based in Paris, France, obtained the files and shared them with ICIJ and its partners.
Nigeria’s poverty minister diverts funds into personal accounts
From Angola, we head to Nigeria, where the government, as recently as in April 2024, recovered some $24 million from poverty minister Betta Edu during a corruption probe by the EFCC. The funds were traced to more than 50 bank accounts belonging to the 37-year-old poverty alleviation minister, who denied any wrongdoing. The Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation Minister was initially suspended in January over the alleged diversion of $640,000 of public money into a personal bank account. President Bola Tinubu then ordered an investigation into her ministry. Dr Edu had insisted the transfer was for the “implementation of grants to vulnerable groups”. After a nearly six-week probe, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said: “As it is now, we are investigating over 50 bank accounts that we have traced money into. That is no child’s play. That’s a big deal,” its chairman Ola Olukoyede said in the latest edition of the agency’s monthly e-magazine, EFCC Alert.
Nigeria’s former oil minister in $90-billion loot scandal
Still, in Africa’s most populous country, ex-minister of oil Diezani Alison-Madueke, who is accused of looting $90 billion from Nigeria’s coffers, was charged with bribery in the UK. Diezani Alison-Madueke has been dogged by corruption allegations since leaving office, which she denies. She is suspected of accepting financial rewards for awarding multi-million dollar oil and gas contracts. A key figure in ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, she also served as the first female president of the oil exporters group Opec. The 63-year-old, who has been on bail since her arrest in London in 2015, has denied all the corruption allegations thrown at her. Assets worth millions of pounds relating to the alleged offences have been frozen as part of an ongoing probe by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), the BBC reported.”These charges are a milestone in what has been a thorough and complex international investigation,” Andy Kelly, from the NCA’s International Corruption Unit, said.The NCA says Ms Alison-Madueke, who served as oil minister from 2010 until 2015, is alleged to have benefited from: At least £100,000 ($127,000) in cash chauffeur-driven cars, flights on private jets, luxury family holidays, use of multiple London properties, furniture, renovation work and staff for the properties, payment of private school fees, and gifts from designer shops such as Cartier jewellery and Louis Vuitton goods.
The US Department of Justice has been able to recover assets totalling $53.1m linked to Ms Alison-Madueke’s alleged corruption thanks to evidence provided by the NCA in March, the agency said. The NCA added that its agents had also worked closely with Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The EFCC had said that about $153m and more than 80 properties had been recovered from the politician, who was in the cabinet from 2007. She first held the post of transport minister, then moved to the ministry of mines before taking over the oil portfolio. The former oil minister, in a statement, also said that the report that Italian prosecutors indicted her for sharing in the loot of the $1.3 billion OPL 245 oil block deal, which involved Malabu and the Joint Venture Multinational partners, ENI (AGIP) and Royal Dutch, was false. “I am a woman from the Niger Delta, who, through perseverance and sheer hard work rose to one of the highest positions in the country’s premier International Oil Company, and in tune with my ethos of hard work, I earned the prestigious British Foreign and Commonwealth Chevening Scholarship Award and was, thereafter, admitted to my MBA programme at the World renowned Cambridge University,” she said.
Ghana’s former small loans boss sentenced to 10 years in GH¢90 million financial loss scandal
Remaining in West Africa, a Ghanaian court, in April 2024, sentenced a former boss of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Ms Sedina Tamakloe Attionu, and a former Operations Manager of the organisation, Daniel Axim, to 10 years and five years in prison, respectively for causing financial loss of GH¢ 90 million to the state. The court found the two guilty of 78 counts of causing financial loss to the state, stealing, conspiracy to steal, money laundering, and causing loss to public property in contravention of the public procurement law.
On the charge of stealing, as reported by the state-owned Daily Graphic newspaper, Ms Attionu, who was tried in absentia, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Mr Axim, who sported a blue kaftan, was sentenced to five years in prison. For the charge of conspiracy to wilfully cause financial loss to the state against the two, Attionu was sentenced to three years coupled with a GH¢ 36,000 fine while Mr Axim was slapped with a 12-month custodial sentence with a GH¢ 12,000 fine. In default of the fine, they will spend an additional jail term of 12 months. For the charge of causing financial loss to the state, Attionu was again slapped with a two-year custodial sentence, in addition to a GH¢ 60,000 fine. On the charge of causing loss to public property and unauthorised commitment resulting in a financial obligation, she was sentenced to six months each. Attionu was sentenced to two years and a GH¢ 12, 0000 fine. In default of the fine, she will spend 12 months in prison. For money laundering, Attionu was sentenced to three years imprisonment and was ordered to pay GH¢ 24,000 cedis, while Mr Axim was sentenced to two years in prison with a GH¢ 12,000 fine. In default, they will spend an extra 12 months in jail. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Even though Attionu was absent, the court relied on her caution statement and cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses by her lawyer to determine her fate. Before sentencing the accused persons, the judge took her time to explain the elements required to prove a case against the accused persons, while assessing the defence put up by Axim, as well as Attionu’s cautioned statement.
Ghana’s sanitation minister hides huge sums of money in private residence
Still in Ghana, Water and Sanitation Minister Cecilia Dapaah had to resign from office late 2003 after huge sums of money – in both foreign and local currencies – were discovered at her private residence. The issue came to the public domain after the minister sued some of her domestic staffers for allegedly pilfering huge sums of money from her. Ghana’s Special Prosecutor probed the matter in collaboration with the FBI of the United States of America. However, the Attorney General, in a recent advice to Ghana’s Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO), said it was unnecessary and baseless for a money laundering probe to be launched into the matter since, according to him, no corruption or corruption-related offences were found against the former minister.
Sirleaf Johnson accused of nepotism
Despite her achievements, Africa’s first-ever elected female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, came under fire for appointing three of her sons to top government posts. One of them was suspended as a deputy governor of the central bank for failing to declare his assets. Also, up to 20 members of her family members were appointed to various government positions at some point during her presidency. Despite declaring corruption as “public enemy number one”, there were numerous allegations of corruption levelled against her government. In the heat of the accusations, Johnson Sirleaf said: “I challenge anyone who says it’s with me or my family. We have a very vibrant society, a society that’s full of rumours and innuendoes … Now I have to put [people] in certain places where I get the best results based upon talent, based upon competence and based upon integrity, and that’s what I do. I stand the test and I challenge anyone who says there are other motives. I stand by my record and stand by the record of my family very firmly.”
Security implications
Poverty is endemic in many African countries. Embezzling funds and stashing them in overseas accounts worsens the already dire situation of millions of Africans who live in poverty. This means just a handful of African elite would live a good life through their corrupt activities while the majority of the continent’s people wallow in poverty, exacerbated by wars, famine, and climate change disasters among others. This bitter poverty, which then becomes cyclical and generational, forces millions of Africa’s youth to seek greener pastures by attempting to trudge through the unfriendly Sahara Desert to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe for a better life. Through this, several thousands of able-bodied African youth have been lost to the desert and sea. These could have been a critical labour mass for the continent’s development. The barefaced thievery of African leaders and the plunder of the continent’s resources by their leaders, also have been the main source of coups and political unrest in many an African country, as epitomised by the overthrow of Shagari in Nigeria as well as some military regimes in Ghana, which even led to the execution of some of them. The more coups we have on the continent, the more democracy gets stifled, paving the way for impunity, humanitarian crises, human rights abuses, criminality, arms smuggling, extremism, terrorism, and other vices to fester wildly. When women, who are seen as more in tune with the suffering of other vulnerable women as well as children, join the thievery, then all hope is lost for such people who look up to them for hope.
Conclusion
In the past, it was rare for a female government appointee to be named or cited for corruption. The wearers of that infamous badge were all men – some of them dictators and old guards who had been in power for decades. The trend has, however, changed. More women are now being named alongside men as culprits of corruption. The worrying aspect is that the women involved were put in positions of trust to help their fellow women and the vulnerable in society, but ended up abusing that trust to line their pockets. Women are perceived as less corrupt than men because, as mothers, they are expected to have fellow feeling for their colleagues in the trenches as well as the vulnerable in society. So, now, if they have joined the stealing brigade, what becomes of the vulnerable in society?
