![Senator Abubakar Bagudu]()
Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan has so far chosen not to move against Abba Moro, the minister of interior, despite the overwhelming outcry by Nigerians over this month’s failed Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment exercise.
It is believed that one of the reasons Pres. Jonathan is shy to move against Moro is because the interior minister has a strong backer in the person of senate president David Mark whose 2011 senatorial campaign was run by Moro.
David Mark’s senate meanwhile ordered an investigation into the failed recruitment exercise that resulted in the death of 16 applicants and the man who will head that investigation is the chairman of the senate committee on interior whose profile does not give much hope of a favourable outcome.
Senator Atiku Abubakar Bagudu is the chairman of the senate committee on interior. But how Bagudu himself managed to become a senator in Nigeria is troubling as the man has one of the shadiest records in the upper chamber dating back to the Abacha days when Bagudu was a prominent front for the looting done by the Abacha family.
Bagudu became a close friend of Ibrahim and Mohammed Abacha, sons of military ruler Sani Abacha. He and Ibrahim Abacha were involved in a scheme to buy vaccines and resell them to the government at a steep mark-up, earning $66.6 million profit. Later, he helped divert much larger sums of money that had been earmarked for security spending into foreign accounts.
After Abacha died in 1998, the interim military government that followed started an investigation into misuse of state funds. Mohammed Abacha and Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, his business manager, returned $750 million. There was no criminal prosecution. Bagudu moved to the USA in 2000, and in 2003 was detained there for six months on charges of financial misdeeds during the Abacha era. He was released in November 2003 on condition that he repaid about $300 million to the Federal Government of Nigeria. The administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo apparently made a deal to recover part of the money in return for dropping prosecution and leaving the remainder with the family.[5] Bagudu was Chairman of Phil Nugent Nigeria Ltd. from 2004 until December 2005.
The 53 year old senator was elected to the national assembly in a 2010 by-election after Adamu Aliero, the former senator representing Kebbi Central was made a minister by Pres. Goodluck Jonathan.
At the time, not much was made of Bagudu’s entry into the senate apart from the reservations of a few activists.
Bagudu was Abacha’s bagman in the days when the dictator pillaged the nation’s treasury. He was Abacha’s conduit through whom passed most of the $4-5 billion Abacha was reputed to have stolen.
Considering how much money Bagudu made from that administration, he had lots of cash to spend and win the senatorial election. He won overwhelmingly, polling 285,578 votes out of the 310,800 total votes cast. The Democratic Peoples Party, DPP, candidate, Alhaji Sambo Aliyu, who scored 8,377, emerged a very distant second, while 16 other candidates got inconsequential votes. The ANPP boycotted that election.
Let’s share some more details of Bagudu’s role in the Abacha government.
According to a report by a newsmagazine, The News:
He had set up Morgan Procurement Corporation and Mecosta Securities which, as Africa Confidential put it, “were involved in the illegal transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Nigerian state to the Abacha family.” According to other reports, Mohammed Abacha and Bagudu siphoned $66m from the $111m purchase of vaccines from the French firm Pasteur Merieux. The loot was kept in foreign financial institutions through the assistance of David Jones, a director of Borough High Street, South London-based Smith & Tyers, where Mohammed is a principal shareholder. For his complicity in this and other illegalities, Bagudu and Mohammed faced court charges on many fronts.
Problem started for Bagudu when the federal government asked for the assistance of the Isle of Jersey government in recovering money fraudulently transferred into the banks in that territory. Thereafter, the Isle of Jersey began its own probe which resulted in the arrest of Bagudu on 22 May 2003 in Houston, Texas, where he had been living for three years. According to reports, Bagudu’s arrest was based on an extradition warrant requested by Britain from the Isle of Jersey. It accused Bagudu of “fraudulent transfer of money from Nigeria to the Deutsche Bank, making false declarations to open the bank accounts, and using federal government fund to purchase notes that federal government had defaulted on, then selling them back to it for twice the purchase price.”
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo visited Jersey in June 2004, to thank the island’s authorities for their efforts at investigating laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars by the Abachas and Bagudu through that country’s financial institutions and the return of some $150m (£73.25m) to Nigeria.
According to The Lawyer, an on-line medium, “the Bagudu matter has been the most high profile in a series of criminal investigations by the island’s attorney-general into the misuse of the services of local financial institutions for the purpose of laundering the proceeds of corruption.” At the request of the Nigerian authorities, Bagudu coughed out $150m.
Nigeria also had its own charges against Bagudu and Abacha’s son, Mohammed: assisting in concealing stolen property, the sum of £10 million each on 6th, 9th January, 1998; £9 million on 12 January 1998; $25 million on 27 January of the same year and others which were “punishable under Section 97(1) of the Penal Code”.
To facilitate the repatriation of the stolen funds, the Federal Government had an agreement with Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. In all, according to reports, Switzerland returned about $615 million.
Very unrepentant, Bagudu hired big lawyers––Gordon Pollock, Lawrence Cohen, SJ Berwin and other Queen’s Counsel––to defend himself and the Abachas. According to a report, “more than $12m is estimated to have already been spent, of which $8m has gone to lawyers in Britain.” They fought feverishly so that the former home secretary, Jack Straw, could soft-pedal in assisting Swiss and Nigerian criminal investigations with banking evidence held in London.
When all his strategems failed, Bagudu, detained in the US for this financial crime, agreed to transfer about $300 million (N40.566 billion) to the federal government. It was paid into Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Limited Bank on the Isle of Jersey. After paying $500,000 bond, he was released from a six-month detention at an American prison by Magistrate Calvin Botley “on the condition that he would transfer the said sum and return to Nigeria to face charges of assisting Mohammed to transfer looted funds abroad”. Bagudu’s counsel in the US was Bob Sussman. The movement of Bagudu, the newly elected senator, was restricted and monitored through an electronic ankle bracelet!
However, Bagudu defended himself when he was questioned at a Swiss court in September 1999. He said that the late Ibrahim Abacha was his childhood friend whom he knew before Mohammed Sani Abacha. He claimed that he became close to the latter after Ibrahim’s death, in a plane crash. Ibrahim and Mohammed, according to Bagudu, had an international sugar company and, “therefore as early as 1985, we had business links without being business partners”.
Bagudu told the court that in February 1994, he and Ibrahim established Morgan Procurement Corporation. “I agreed to work with Mr. Ibrahim Sani Abacha in 1994 because the latter had a huge fortune and I had a lot of ideas about how to invest or manage the fortune. At that time, my fortune was much smaller than now,” he added. But he argued that there was no direct link between the rise to power of General Sani Abacha in November 1993 and the fact that he accepted in February 1994 to become the business partner of his eldest son, Mr. Ibrahim Sani Abacha. “It was only coincidental. However, it is probable that the fact that my new trading partner is the son of the head of state contributed to a large extent to the expansion of our business,” Bagudu admitted.
One of those who have opposed Sen. Bagudu’s rise is former president Olusegun Obasanjo. In 2010, Obasanjo notably protested against Sen. Bagudu making a speech during the launching of a book on late Abubakar Garba Koko at the Shehu Yaradua Centre in Abuja. This event occurred after Bagudu had won the senatorial election but by then he had not been sworn in.
When Bagudu was called on to speak at the event, Obasanjo, who was the Chairman of the book launch ceremony, vehemently objected.
With such a character placed in charge of the NIS recruitment investigation, does anyone have any hope that a thorough job will be done? Does Bagudu have any moral right to stand among decent members of the society to perform such a function?
Some soldiers are feared killed today when suicide bombers in two separate vehicles rammed into two military patrol vehicles at a major checkpoint in the outskirt of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
