Buhari tackles corruption in Nigeria's state-owned oil company

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Up to $12 billion of Nigerian oil money was "diverted" by the corrupt folks in its state-owned oil company, reports the Economist.

"The state-owned oil company sells almost half the 2m barrels that Africa’s biggest producer churns out each day, making it the government’s single largest source of revenue. It has been dogged by allegations of wrongdoing since Mr Buhari helped create it back in the 1970s. Under the watch of the former president, Goodluck Jonathan, and his petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, it ran totally out of control. Even as the price of oil boomed between 2011 and 2014, remittances to the treasury fell (see chart). Now that prices have plummeted, government coffers are empty and the currency has tanked."

Thanks in part to his corruption (as well as his poor performance against Boko Haram), Jonathan lost to Buhari, and now Buhari seems to be delivering on his promise to root out corruption. "Mr Buhari has sacked the NNPC’s board and earlier this month named Emmanuel Kachikwu, a Harvard-trained lawyer and former Exxon Mobil bigwig, as chief executive. He has already started axing old-guard executives."

It will take more than that to solve Nigeria's corruption problems (Nigeria isn't at the bottom of Transparency International's ranking any more but it's fairly close - tied with Russia and a few other countries at #136 out of 174 countries). But it's a good start.

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