Cameron’s gaffe, Buhari’s candour

On the eve of last week’s anti-corruption summit in London at which President Muhammadu Buhari was expected to give a keynote address, British Prime Minister David Cameron was caught on camera describing Nigeria and Afghanistan as “fantastically corrupt” countries.  Cameron was briefing Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace about the upcoming summit. He said his government had managed to coral corrupt countries around the world, including Nigeria and Afghanistan, two of the world’s most “fantastically corrupt countries,” to attend.
Cameron’s statement was not only improper and reckless but it mirrors the racist impulse that undergirds British foreign policy and elite attitudes to Africa. In the footage however, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who has done some work in Nigeria, quickly intervened and said, “But this particular president (Buhari) is not corrupt…He’s trying very hard.” Nigerians were generally outraged when the video went viral on social media. Not necessarily because we are proud of our country’s standing in the corruption index of nations but because Mr. Cameron’s brief remark to the 90 year-old Queen conveyed the impression that the leader of a corrupt gang, more or less, is coming to town to be dressed down at the anti-corruption summit. That was why the Archbishop of Canterbury’s clarification was doubly important.

In his response to the prime minister’s gaffe, President Buhari said he was not going to demand for an apology but rather, that the funds looted by corrupt Nigerian rulers and businessmen and stashed away in Britain should be returned. He said, “No, I am not going to demand any apology from anybody. What I will be demanding is the return of assets…This is what I am asking for. What will I do with an apology? I need something tangible.”
We totally agree with President Buhari that an apology from David Cameron and the British government, at this stage, is meaningless. The president’s response is brilliant,  diplomatic and laden with meaningful sarcasm. When asked by journalists at the pre anti-corruption conference if Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt”, President Buhari candidly said “Yes”, adding that corruption in Nigeria is endemic but his government is committed to fighting it.
Fittingly, two British newspapers, The Guardian and The Telegraph, supported Buhari last week and they accused Cameron, Britain and the Western world generally of hypocrisy. “They have spent decades ordering poor countries and failed states to sort out their problems with dodgy money, even while taking much of that dodgy money and ploughing it through their banks, their ritzy stores, their estate agents, and their offshore tax havens,” The Guardian stated in its editorial on Wednesday last week. An Op-Ed piece in The Telegraph also pointed out that what should have given Cameron pause for thought before he made his comments to the Queen was, “More than half of the companies named in law firm Mossack Fonseca files are incorporated in Britain’s own tax havens. In fact a full 50 percent of the companies are from British Virgin Islands.”
Thus, we laud the president’s honesty and candour. Nigeria’s corruption is not hidden and has still not been extirpated. So why deny the obvious? What is significant as President Buhari makes clear is that Britain should return billions of Nigeria’s stolen money stashed away in its shores and in other places where they have been taken. Nigeria’s Economic Intelligence reports indicate that Britain is the biggest recipient of “looted” Nigerian money, and that those who have made Nigeria “fantastically corrupt” have been most welcome in Britain.
Nigerians own some of the most expensive houses in London and other cities in Britain. They also have fat bank accounts and they have investments that are fantastically alarming; much of this wealth is earned illegally. Now the onus is on Britain and other Western countries, which are fantastically clean, to quit their lucrative roles as receivers of stolen goods and return the looted billions to us.