Nuhu Ribadu, Nigerian Corruption Fighter, in the House

Nuhu Ribadu, the former anti-corruption czar of Nigeria, is no longer on the job, but is still fighting the good fight.  Nuhu was profiled in the Washington Post Outlook section, and explained why corruption “is the reason why Africa is Africa today.”  Nuhu also testified to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services late last week.

… some $20 billion leaves Africa annually through the illicit export of money extorted from development loan contracts. This outflow is not just abstract numbers: it translates to the concrete reality of kids who cannot be put in schools, who will never learn to read, because there are no classrooms; mothers who die in childbirth because the money for maternity care never made it to the hospitals; tens of thousands who die because there are no drugs or vaccines in hospitals; no roads to move produce from farms to markets or enable a thriving economy; no jobs for young school graduates or even ordinary workers; and no security for anyone because the money has been stolen and shipped out.

Read the full testimony here.Watch the video here.Nuhu is now also in our house:  We are honored to have Nuhu as a visiting fellow here at CGD.  He will be spending the reminder of this year drawing lessons from his experience for other countries and for agencies like the World Bank.  His work will build on our past research on corruption, including Ted Moran’s Combating Corrupt Payments.(Also, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala gave the 2007 Sabot Lecture on corruption, presciently calling our attention to the scourge of “political corruption.”)