Nigeria Anti-Corruption Campaign Suffers Major Setback

Nigeria’s law enforcement agency recently announced that it was reassigning Nuhu Ribadu, the current Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, to a remotely located training institute for at least a year. According to the New York Times, Ribadu “has risen to become one of the most powerful and feared figures in Nigeria.” His aggressiveness in combating government corruption have been lauded at home and by the West. Not surprisingly, his willingness to take on powerful Nigerian politicians has put him in a precarious position. The move to sideline Ribadu was quickly condemned by activists, including Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, as a step backward in the effort to clean up Nigeria’s government. According to Soyinka, “it is the ruling party itself, the PDP, that continues to suffocate the nation in its folds of corruption, negating every attempt to rid her of this incubus, since that party has exhibited itself, again and again, as the very quagmire of corruption, nurtured on corruption, sustained by corruption and dependent on corruption for its very survival.”