In September 2011, Ahmad Ali, who owned the British luxury goods firm Gold and Co., disclosed to a reporter a stunning order made by the Nigerian government under former President Goodluck Jonathan: 53 customized gold iPhones.
They were for the celebration of Nigeria’s 53rd independence anniversary that year. The order required the phones to be engraved with Nigeria’s coat of arms, a shield, and two horses.
The deal was going to cost Nigeria between £3,000 and £50,000 per phone (or about N662m at the time).
It was a wonderful idea until Mr Ali spoke to a British journalist, Simon Usborne, with The Independent newspaper.
The Nigerian government denied and denounced the report, compelling Mr Ali to say that the order had come from an individual.
Scandal is not new to Nigerian governance.
Also in September 2011, following a meeting in Abuja between President Jonathan and the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hyundai Heavy Industries of South Korea, Mr Jai-Seong Lee, the government announced that Hyundai Heavy would establish a multi-billion-dollar shipyard in Bayelsa state.
Mr Jonathan was widely quoted as telling Mr Lee, “Hyundai has a long-standing relationship with Nigeria. You have always played a key role in our economy, especially our oil industry. We appreciate what you have done and are elated by your latest investment in the shipyard at Brass.”
Within hours, however, much to Nigeria’s embarrassment, Hyundai Heavy denied any intention to build that shipyard.
Fast forward to October 2011: The Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s highly respected newspaper, reported that Nigeria would build three oil refineries in the country for $2.6bn.
The plan involved PT Pertamina, the Indonesian state company, buying crude oil from Nigeria, processing it at the refineries, and exporting it to Nigeria.
As in the case of the gold iPhones, Nigeria quickly denied the story, as if a mere denial restores credibility.
On what basis does a major newspaper on the other side of the world publish a story with such specifics as their Petroleum Minister, the number of refineries, the amount to be spent, and the project plan? Nigeria was in a hurry to deny but would not investigate.
We have continued to be involved in international scandals, including those involving Nigeria’s current President, Mr Bola Tinubu, with every conceivable kind of negative or corrupt chapter mixed in and laughed at wherever we go.
After he won last year’s election, The New York Times described Tinubu as “a divisive figure in Africa’s most populous country.” The international media continue to cite his drug trafficking allegations with the United States government and those surrounding his Chicago State University education.
At home, his image remains of tremendous concern, not simply because of his unexplained personal wealth. As president, he is widely derided for his extremely poor performance, the country’s mounting economic problems, and widespread corruption. The mass protests this month made his unpopularity extremely clear.
And then last week, even bigger scandals and embarrassments arrived: his precious presidential jets were ordered to be seized in France.
In an era in which top officials buy and trade in executive jets for themselves and their families rather than serve their people, the presidency obviously thought that sending the three jets to France for “routine maintenance” would be business as usual. One of them was a new acquisition that was yet to be delivered to the president.
The story is like a Greek fable, beginning with a disagreement between Nigeria’s Ogun State, which wanted to build an industrial park, and the Chinese company Zhongshan, which was contracted to build it in 2007.
In 2016, Ogun State, at its pleasure, “terminated” the contract. In Nigeria, this is routine. Governments—governors in particular—are overwhelmingly powerful. The governor gives and takes.
There was only one problem in this case—nobody remembered to tell Zhongshan that although it may have been executing a contract in Nigeria, it was not a Nigerian.
Had it been a Nigerian firm, the matter would have been simple; the governor would have squashed it or, if he wished, destroyed the company overnight.
Zhongshan, alleging a “campaign of illegal acts,” rested on the law, which came to involve the federal government because that is how international law works.
Power in Nigeria—political power—is impatient and arrogant. The law is, well, the law, and very patient.
In 2021, years after the original governor was long gone, an arbitration tribunal in Europe ruled against Ogun State and awarded compensation of $74.5 million to Zhongshan.
Because power in Nigeria is its authority, however, Ogun State is said to have refused to pay the money. This is the basic outline of the case.
Everything else is the law moving slowly, and Nigeria, once it became a defendant, travels with an umbrella riddled with holes. The name of the umbrella: “sovereign immunity.”
But just imagine President Muhammadu Buhari, for a moment, picking his teeth and watching television in his favourite London hospital being told of that award not far away from him against Ogun! He must have had tears of laughter running down his cheeks!
Nigeria, a nation currently without diplomats abroad, was breakdancing under that sovereign immunity umbrella last week when the United States Court of Appeals ruled that Zhongshan could confiscate Nigeria’s assets abroad.
Again, in Nigeria, this might have been a far simpler matter. Beyond closing the company, we might have chased the owner into Cameroon or Canada. Or we might have humoured him and allowed him to go to court, knowing that our judiciary has become a laughingstock and our judges, Nigeria’s top bribe-collectors, with justice a matter of money.
Sadly, not now. Not here. The court prohibits the movement, sale, or purchase of the jets until Zhongshan is paid every kobo of that $74.5 million.
Armed with favourable judgments in France and the U.S., Zhongshan has now indicated that it is willing to settle the matter with the federal government.
The question is how much more embarrassment Nigeria can take? How many more cases of this nature are going through the courts out there, given the ruthlessness of our governments throughout the Fourth Republic?
Remember that in 2018, for instance, it was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that paid off a $76 million loan obtained by Nigeria from Japan in 2014.
Meanwhile, in addition to several court orders to Buhari and Tinubu to account for the spending of repatriated Abacha loot, which is being ignored, there is a deeply opaque record of external borrowing in the country. Does anyone know where the Nigerian economy has been?
As far back as 2012, remember, Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, warned of a “scramble” for Chinese loans among Nigerian officials. She described it as “a phenomenon where a lot of Chinese companies come to different ministries and agencies with particular projects they are interested in, and when the MDAs say yes, they sometimes go and help negotiate the credit.”
Maybe I am now asking the questions. Given this moment in Nigeria and the credentials of those in control, what comes next? Have we become immune to shame and embarrassment?
