Criminal Politics: Violence, “Godfathers” and Corruption in Nigeria

over the eight years of the Obasanjo administration. 88 That figure would equal
between 4.25% and 9.5% of Nigeria’s total GDP in 2006. To put those numbers in
perspective, a loss of 9.5% of the United States’ GDP to corruption in 2006 would
have translated into $1.25 trillion in stolen funds or $222 billion (GBP 108.6 billion 89 )
in the case of the United Kingdom’s economy. 90
Human Rights Watch has documented the human rights impact of systemic corruption
and mismanagement in Rivers State—Nigeria’s largest oil producer and the wealthiest
state in the nation. 91 In Rivers the state and local governments have failed to make
meaningful improvements in the state’s badly dilapidated primary health and
education sectors in recent years despite per capita spending far in excess of many
West African countries at the state level alone. 92 Instead, an unprecedented influx of
revenue into state and local government coffers has been squandered or stolen. At the
same time, the rising financial stakes have helped push struggles over political office
to become more violent. 93 The 2007 elections in Rivers surpassed even the dismal
nationwide norm in their brazen rigging by government officials. 94
The situation in Rivers is by no means unique. While Nigeria’s government earned an
estimated $223 billion during the eight years of the Obasanjo administration alone,
between 50 and 90 million Nigerians live on less than one US dollar a day and per
capita income stands at one-third the level it had reached in 1980. Nigeria also has
88 Human Rights Watch interviews with diplomatic officials, Abuja, April 2007; Human Rights Watch telephone interview with
western diplomatic official, June 18, 2007. That estimate includes money lost to corruption from the budgets of Nigeria’s
federal, state and local governments along with money stolen or otherwise diverted from parastatal companies including the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Ibid.
89 Calculated at an exchange rate of 1USD = GBP .4895.
90 According to the CIA World Factbook, in 2006 the GDP of the United States stood at $13.21 trillion, while that of the United
Kingdom was estimated at $2.346 trillion. Available online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/geos/us.html
(accessed August 4, 2007).
91 Human Rights Watch, Nigeria—“Chop Fine”: The Human Rights Impact of Local Government Corruption and Mismanagement
in Rivers State, Nigeria, vol. 19, no. 2(A), January 2007, http://hrw.org/reports/2007/nigeria0107.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid. See also Human Rights Watch, The Unacknowledged Violence; Human Rights Watch, Nigeria—Rivers and Blood: Guns,
Oil and Power in Nigeria’s Rivers State, February 2005, http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/nigeria0205.
94 See Human Rights Watch, “Nigeria: Polls Marred by Violence, Fraud”; Stakeholder Democracy Network, “Further Rigging:
Election Observation Report, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers States,” pp. 14-20 and 34-40.
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