Human Rights Watch and Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency are hailing the conviction and jailing of Nigerian “big man” James Ibori. A British court has sentenced the former governor of Delta state to jail for thirteen years for money laundering and associated crimes. Ibori pled guilty to numerous counts. The judge said that if he had fought the case, “he would be looking at twenty-four years but will get a discount for pleading guilty,” according to the press. Already in jail in the UK is his wife, his sister, his mistress, and his London solicitor, all convicted of related crimes. Read more »

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers.

Nigeria’s struggle against corruption is moving slowly, at least in terms of results. Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index 2011″, which evaluates 183 countries, put Nigeria at 143. The country ranked 134 out of 178 countries in 2010. Read more »

This is a guest post by Asch Harwood, the Council on Foreign Relations Africa program research associate. Follow him on Twitter at @aschlfod. Read more »

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers.

Reportedly, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has invited World Bank officials to vet all federal government contracts. “Very soon we will get people from the World Bank to be at my office. For every contract we want to award, irrespective of the structures we have on the ground, they will assess it so that if a job is supposed to cost N10,000 and it’s awarded for N10,000, the likelihood that the contractor bribing anybody will be reduced,” Jonathan was quoted as saying. Read more »

This is a guest post by Asch Harwood, the Council on Foreign Relations Africa program research associate. Follow him on Twitter at @aschlfod.

John Campbell has regularly made the point that from 1999 to 2007  increasingly bad elections led Nigerians to withdraw from the political process. Despite official proclamations, the 2007 elections were thought to have had an extremely low turnout.

A recent paper (PDF) by the National Bureau of Economic Research (h/t to Chris Blattman), “Looking Beyond the Incumbent: The Effects of Exposing Corruption on Electoral Outcomes,” provides what could be some empirical evidence from their randomized experiment in Mexico to support this observation. Read more »

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders.

In Ben Simon’s February 3rd AFP article, “As protests fade, Nigerians left to cope with fuel hike,” the plight of ordinary Nigerians coping with the increased price of fuel is noted. “Jonathan partly capitulated [on his fuel subsidy removal initiative], agreeing to a compromise price of 97 naira, or $0.60 per litre, 20 cents more expensive than the fully subsidized price, but less painful than the $0.87 charged immediately after the program was annulled,” Simon writes. Read more »