KR#19: The importance of counting

New investigations and analysis from ZAM and our network.

Dear reader,

This edition of the Kleptocracy Report is shorter than usual because of the holiday period, when even hard-hitting investigations suffer some delay. We therefore replace our normal format with just one update to you.

Our selection centers around some remarkable counting, accounting and influencing that has taken place in the previous month. Excitingly, this includes work done by individual protagonists who do their own probing into theft and fraud by the politically powerful in their countries.

Nigeria: tracking US$ 2 billion and fighting for school books

In Nigeria, a vocal activist who goes by the name of Lady Ejiro Umukoro has made waves recently by counting exactly how much funding is made available by the overall government to her country’s 36 states and 774 Local Government Areas. She added income that these states receive from selling their own oil and minerals to other parties, and the taxes they levy. As you can see on her website Lightraymedia.org, she found that 2.63 trillion Nigerian Naira, almost 2 billion US$, are, or ought to be, in the coffers of these structures of government.

“If the health center in your village is empty, no borehole, and potholes everywhere, the question starts at home, not (the federal presidency at) Aso Rock”, she writes, encouraging citizens to pose the question: “Governor, what did you do with your share this month?” to the political leaders of their own states.

Image from Lightraymedia.org

Lady Ejiro has also recently successfully campaigned to reverse a fee hike in school textbooks in Nigeria. Spearheading a national campaign against the hike after it was announced by government, and arguing that expensive textbooks would shut out low-income families, she and her fellow activists in the Nigeria Publishers Association and the Network of Book Clubs, got the government to reverse the decision. Read more about that here.

Uganda: following the pick-up truck

Our NAIRE partners at Agora in Uganda clocked an even bigger success when an official investigation finally followed up on political elite theft unearthed by the Agora platform over recent years. The case of millions of US$ that were misappropriated from parliamentary budgets under the leadership of (now ex-) speaker Anita Among has now led to the arrest of seven parliamentary officials.

In a podcast, principal Agora activist, lawyer and NAIRE member Agather Atuhaire explained that “some of this money would be withdrawn directly from Bank of Uganda (through the) basement where there are no CCTV cameras, put in a pickup and former Speaker, Anita Among’s security would pick it up.”

Malawi: does its government not want more tax?

Meanwhile, our partners at the Platform for Investigative Journalism in Malawi dug into an archaic colonial tax agreement. The Malawi-UK Double Taxation Agreement, signed in London in 1955 under the long-defunct Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, “has, over the years, been silently bleeding Malawi dry”, their investigation reads.

The PIJ counted the costs of this agreement, that protects UK-based multinationals from paying tax in Malawi, -and invites companies from other countries to operate through shell companies in London to also take advantage of this- amount to between US$10 million and US$50 million annually. “It says it protects both sides, the UK and Malawi, from “double taxation”, but how many Malawi multinationals operate in the UK?”, asks PIJ investigative reporter and NAIRE member Josephine Chinele.

Image PIJ

Remarkably, the PIJ established, the UK seems willing enough to change it, but six consecutive governments in Malawi have remained inactive on the matter and still respond to journalists’ questions with a “bureaucratic ping-pong” between departments and ministries. The report quotes a governance expert who explains that the short term gains politicians get from governing in Malawi prevent “leave little room for complex, long-term fiscal reform.”

The expert alludes to the essence of a patronage system, where “before you are even appointed, your whole village and your voters are already making demands and taking advantage of your position. This is why our leaders don’t have time to understand the essentials — every politically appointed leader’s foundation is weak.” We strongly recommend reading the full report here.

Senegal and Sierra Leone: leaders and morality

West Africa, plus -probably- a sizeable number of patronage state researchers worldwide, sat up straight when Al Jazeera interviewedSenegal’s Parliamentary Speaker Ousmane Sonko, who had just been sacked from government and was now set to, in his words, focus on “accountability and transparency” from parliament.

In June, Sonko had been fired from the government he entered as premier in 2024 together with his then ally Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who became president. In May this year, however, a decree by Faye “ended (Sonko’s) duties” as well as those of other ministers from Sonko’s party, PASTEF. Sonko, a well-known activist and social justice champion, remains parliamentary speaker and PASTEF has a majority in parliament.

In the Al Jazeera interview, Sonko explained that Senegal’s debt crisis is in part due to loans that were “unapproved” by parliament, and that the president, who came in together with him on a progressive and social justice ticket “unfortunately” appears to have sided “politically” with those who incurred those loans. “Politics were put above morals”, he said, announcing that parliament will be “active to redress” the situation. A first parliamentary volley for a constitutional amendment that would curb presidential powers was rejected by Senegal’s top judicial body on 10 July, but the battle seems far from over.

In contrast to Sonko, the family of Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maade Bio appears to have no moral problems with the romantic relationship between Maade’s daughter Agnes Bio and one of Europe’s most wanted criminals. Africa Confidential reports that Dutch cocaine kingpin Jos Leijdekkers, or ‘Bolle Jos’ (‘Fat Jos’ in Dutch), is at large in Sierra Leone and believed to be running his business there. He has been seen in photographs taken at a public event in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, in close proximity to the president and his wife Fatima Maade Bio, who has been celebrated by civil society in the West for opposing child marriage.

According to the OCCRP, Fatima Maade Bio also held on to a subsidized, social housing flat in London for years, even after she moved into her country’s presidential palace.

• ZAM works with investigative reporters in African countries to bring you this content. Please subscribe, preferably paid, to support and enable more ZAM and NAIRE Kleptocracy Reports. Also: do comment and send us alerts to news we should be aware of!