Bloomberg: Graft Allegations Dog APC, PDP Presidential Candidates

• Tinubu, Abubakar have both been accused of corruption • Issue is unlikely to feature on campaign trail, analysts say

The fight against corruption has been a top campaign issue in Nigeria’s last two presidential elections, but the history of graft allegations surrounding the two main candidates means neither is likely to raise it in the run-up to February’s vote.

Front-runner Bola Tinubu, who secured the ruling party’s nomination earlier this month, was being investigated by the country’s anti-corruption agency as recently as last June. Three decades ago he fought a lawsuit in which the US government accused him of laundering the proceeds of heroin trafficking and eventually reached a settlement, Bloomberg reported.

Also, Atiku Abubakar, his chief rival, allegedly brought tens of millions of dollars of “suspect funds” into the US when he was

Nigeria’s vice president in the 2000s, according to a US Senate report, and was implicated in a bribery case that resulted in the imprisonment of an American congressman. Neither episode resulted in charges against Abubakar.

Spokesmen for Tinubu and Abubakar didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The next president will face a daunting challenge to turn around Africa’s largest economy. Falling oil production threatens Nigeria’s place as the continent’s biggest crude producer, inflation is soaring and more than half of the working-age population are either unemployed or underemployed.

The local currency has depreciated steeply under outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, falling from around N220 to the US dollar on the parallel market when he was first elected in early 2015 to about N600 this week.

Nigeria vies with India as the country with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty despite having a seventh of the population. Meanwhile, secessionists, Islamist militants and armed criminal gangs terrorise large swathes of territory.

Efforts to restore security and fix the economy alone will likely fall short because there’s an unavoidable connection between financial graft and government dysfunction in Nigeria, said Leena Koni Hoffmann, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London. Corruption “hollows systems out and cripples them from the inside,” she said.

The race will see the two wealthy septuagenarians mobilise impressive political machines built over more than 30 years pursuing power in Africa’s most-populous country, the report stated.

It alleged that voters in Nigeria are often offered cash, food or clothing to persuade them to cast their ballots for particular candidates.

On the eve of the last election in 2019, two armored bank vans were photographed driving into Tinubu’s home.

“If I have money to spend, if I like, I give it to the people for free of charge as long as it’s not to buy votes,” he had told reporters when asked what the vehicles were transporting.

Tinubu and Abubakar have cultivated deep systems of political patronage, according to Hoffmann. Both men excel at “engineering and expanding political networks through co-optation, through channeling and redistributing money and positions and favors,” she said.