Huu ndio msimamo wa Rais wa Nigeria muhammadu buhari juu wazir mkuu wa uingereza.

May 11, 2016 | The Guardian UK
President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria
has said he does not want an apology
from David Cameron for calling his
country fantastically corrupt, but a return
of the billions taken out of his country
and sent to the UK.
Speaking at a Commonwealth anti-
corruption conference, he said: “What
would I do with an apology? I need
something tangible. I am not going to
demand any apology from anyone. What I
am demanding is a return of assets.”
Around $37bn (£25.6bn) in stolen money
from Nigeria has been routed through
London, Nigeria’s anti-corruption chief,
Ibrahim Mahu, said at the conference.
Buhari said it was well established that
Nigerian assets were being stolen on an
industrial scale, often being sent through
financial centres such as London. The
country had lost billions through stolen
oil and leading politicians taking money.
It was now facing disaster, he said.
“With the collapse of the oil price we
need every cent we can get now just to
pay salaries, if not for anything else.”
Asked at the event if Nigeria was a
“fantastically corrupt” country, Buhari
thought for a moment and said: “Yes.”
He refused, however, to say whether he
regarded Cameron’s remarks as rude,
saying that Britain had led in trying to
track down former Nigerian government
members who had acted disgracefully.
He also praised British law enforcement
agencies for arresting former Nigerian
governors, including some who dressed
as women to get out of the UK.
Mahu, the anti-corruption chief, said
proceeds from the sale of stolen Nigerian
oil were among the funds routed through
the UK. “London is the capital of money-
laundering,” he said.
“Over the years 2014 to 2015, they [the
old administration] brought in not less
than $37bn into London from Nigeria.
They take away oil, and they route the
money through London - we suspect not
less than $37bn.”
Mahu said his hardest task was the
resistance faced by Buhari’s
administration. “We need to put our
heads together, and get our act together
to fight corruption. Corruption fighting
back - I think that is the most difficult
obstacle. When they fight back, they fight
from all angles.
“The president is committed to fighting
corruption - that is our strength. He’s not
just pretending.”
Buhari called at the summit for a multi-
state agency to combat what he
described as the hydra-headed menace of
corruption. He announced that Nigeria
would be joining the Open Government
Partnership, an international body
designed to make the activities of
government more transparent, including
over public procurement.
The British Cabinet Office minister Matt
Hancock, speaking at the same event,
said he agreed with Buhari, whose
government he said had been behind the
curve on the issue of corruption, but was
now focused on ideas such as a public
beneficial ownership register.
He refused to say if the government was
embarrassed by Cameron’s
characterisation of Nigeria, saying it was
concentrating on getting results at its
major anti-corruption conference on
Thursday.
Defending the UK government’s actions
over its overseas territories, which will
not be forced to create central registries
of company ownership, Hancock said:
“We are prepared to stick our neck out
and act alone, but what we need is the
whole world to move together.” He said if
one jurisdiction made a change, there
was a danger that illegal transactions
could go to a different jurisdiction.
The Commonwealth secretary general,
Patricia Scotland, lauded Buhari’s efforts
to end corruption in Nigeria since he
became president last year.
“The corruption is there ... I don’t think
the prime minister was wrong to say that
corruption is a real issue for these
countries. But the problem ... the
question is, what are we going to do
about it and what is the president [Buhari]
doing about it and are we globally willing
to help him,” she told BBC Breakfast.
Buhari said illicit oil theft involving
international and domestic perpetrators
needed to be seen as a crime on a
similar level as the stealing of blood
diamonds. He called for Lloyd’s of
London to do more to trace ships loaded
with crude oil and for greater
transparency in commodity trading.
Oil theft, he said, was an imminent and
credible threat to oil-producing countries
such as Nigeria.
He said the oil was certainly traceable if
the international community showed the
required political will to end criminal
trading. “This will has been the missing
link in the international effort. Now in
London we can turn a new page by
building a multi-state multi-stakeholder
partnership to address this menace.”
Pointing out that both BP and Shell had
been there at the start of the Nigerian oil
industry, he said many of these
companies knew key players in the
industry, and could help fight corruption.
He also expressed frustration that he had
to follow a tolerant legal system that
presumed someone was innocent until
proven guilty even though when they were
riding around in Rolls-Royces.
“Mercifully,” he added, “documentation is
helping us to trace billions of dollars.”
Buhari said any country that thought it
was safe from the international cartels of
corruption “needed to wake up”.
He told the conference: “We need an
international anti-corruption infrastructure
that can monitor trace and facilitate the
return of assets to the countries of origin.
The repatriation of proven stolen assets
should be done without delay or
precondition.”
Chukwuka Utazi, a Nigerian senator who
chairs a committee on financial crimes
and corruption, said that Cameron was a
hypocrite and dismissed the summit as a
“talking shop”.
“Let these governments return all these
stolen funds in London, then we can
believe what he is saying. If he just
comes here and makes guarded
statements like he did yesterday, we as a
nation are not happy about it.
“Great Britain, as a great ally of Nigeria,
should do better than they’re doing for
this country. Hypocritical - that’s just the
word.
“It takes two to tango. The problem of
this country [UK] is in receiving stolen
assets, ill-gotten money, and keeping it
here, and telling our country that they’re
not doing the right thing is not the way to
solve the problem.”