Corruption

A growing number of actors have joined the fight against dirty money. The success of global efforts to combat illicit financial flows, however, remains uncertain. 

On October 9, President Cyril Ramaphosa accepted the resignation of Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister. Critics are accusing Nene of lying about the frequency of his contacts with the notorious Gupta family, which is now being investigated for “state capture.” He is also accused of somehow facilitating a deal involving his son, a Mozambican refinery, and a state financing agency. For his part, Nene has apologized for understating the number and location of his meetings with the Guptas, but has denied any involvement in his son’s businesses. He has been not been charged with any wrongdoing so far.  While finance minister under former President Jacob Zuma, Nene countered successfully the erstwhile president’s efforts with the Guptas to fund a poorly conceived nuclear power initiative—from which it is likely they would have personally benefited. Further, Nene has provided devastating testimony about Zuma and the Guptas before the current Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, known as the Zondo Commission. Nene was regarded as a “white hat” during the dark days of Zuma's administration, and was eventually fired in 2015. But Ramaphosa’s enemies within the ANC, as well as in the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), put intense political pressure on Nene to go once he acknowledged the full extent of his meeting with the Guptas. It is unclear what effect this will have on the ANC’s chances in the upcoming elections. Ramaphosa has launched an initiative, “New Dawn,” that looks to rejuvenate South Africa’s economy and clean up corruption within the ANC and state-owned enterprises. He is arguing to the electorate that the ANC is able to “self-correct,” and Nene’s departure strengthens this position. The DA and the EFF counter, arguing that there is no “good” ANC and “bad” ANC, but only one ANC, and that it should be voted out of power. The accusations against Nene would appear politically to have undercut the credibility of Ramaphosa’s anti-corruption policies, even though Nene’s sins appear venial, if indeed they exist at all. Ramaphosa also faces opposition within the ANC. Zuma still has supporters within the party, reflecting at least in part his success in building patronage networks. Some of them stand to lose from Ramaphosa’s anitcorruption drive, and they likely applauded Nene’s departure. In Nene's place, Ramaphosa appointed Tito Mboweni as the new finance minister. He was the first black governor of the South African Reserve Bank, holding the post from 1999 to 2009. During his tenure, he increased South Africa’s reserves from $10 billion to $40 billion. He later worked for Goldman Sachs and served on various corporate boards. He is not expected to change Nene’s policies significantly, and business confidence in him is reflected in the recovery of the Rand after falling with Nene’s departure. Although Mboweni apparently supported Ramaphosa’s chief rival, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, in the 2017 ANC leadership race, his presence in the cabinet is likely to strengthen Ramaphosa’s hand.  The Nene episode shows that Ramaphosa takes seriously attacks on the credibility of his reform program, especially as the elections draw nearer. Nene, a reformer himself, likely did not want to jeopardize Ramaphosa's efforts against corruption. Hence his resignation. (Especially under Zuma, ministers were fired rather than resigning.) Ramaphosa may well bring Nene back into his administration after the elections conclude.

Brazil’s general election will be one of the biggest tests of its democracy in decades. Here’s a rundown of the candidates and issues to watch.

The New York Times has published a long article on internecine murder within South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC). The victims are mostly local politicians, typically rivals of those entrenched in the party’s machinery and its corruption, and killings take place mostly in rural KwaZu-Natal. During the nine years that Jacob Zuma led the party and was chief of state, portions of the ANC increasingly came to resemble a criminal conspiracy. In some ways, the current round of killings resembles a feud among Mafiosi. Crispian Olver, once an ANC operative, in How to Steal a City: The Battle for Nelson Mandela Bay, profiled ANC political corruption in Port Elizabeth, located in the Eastern Cape. KwaZulu-Natal is Zuma’s political base, and he remains active there. He reportedly has been seeking to sabotage his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa. His fellow Zulus are about a quarter of South Africa’s population and a large majority of the population of KwaZulu-Natal. Zuma is especially strong in the rural areas, where he has allied himself with the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini. Zuma is increasingly the voice of traditional, nativist rural dwellers opposed to the de-tribalized, urban, and modern elements of the ANC led by Ramaphosa. KwaZulu, which was later incorporated into the province of Natal in 1994 to form Kwazulu-Natal, was a self-governing homeland under apartheid, and has long been violent. During the dismantling of apartheid and the run-up to the country’s first non-racial election in 1994, there was a veritable civil war in the homeland between the ANC, led by Zuma, and the rival Inkatha Freedom Party, led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and probably egged on by the apartheid security services. After the end of apartheid, Zuma and the ANC became dominant in the province and his new ally, King Zwelithini, was a rival of Buthelezi in Zulu politics. KwaZulu in some ways resembles Native American reservations. The land is under the control of a tribal trust that in turn is run by the obscurantist king. Within the tribal trust territories, there is no fee-simple ownership of land, and farmers have no security of tenure, reinforcing the political power of the king. Ending this system has long been a goal of those who advocate land reform, along with the push to increase black ownership of land. Despite the image of Nelson Mandela, internecine violence was also characteristic of the ANC during the struggle against apartheid. It was especially notable in ANC fighter camps outside of South Africa, where “apartheid spies” were murdered with no due-process and with the suspicion of trumped-up charges by political rivals. Jacob Zuma, chief of ANC intelligence in Zambia, has been linked to such murders, but he has never been tried or convicted.  Violence between members of the ANC in rural KwaZulu-Natal occurs far away from modern, sophisticated Johannesburg, Cape Town, and even nearby Durban. The internal politics within the ANC is therefore understandably very different in these urban areas from what goes on in rural areas. In so many ways, South Africa is a developed country with a modern infrastructure, the rule of law, and strong protection of human rights on the one hand, and a developing country on the other. For example, the constitution has sweeping guarantees of the equality of women, while King Goodwill tries to enforce patriarchy within his dominions. To an extent, Ramaphosa is caught in the middle as he prepares for elections in early 2019. To preserve its parliamentary majority, the ANC is dependent on its rural base—and on KwaZulu-Natal. Hence, his critics credibly claim, his reluctance to clamp down on the ANC there.  

U.S. administration is coming out on the wrong side of anti-corruption and migration in the hemisphere, with potentially lasting consequences for U.S.-Latin American relations.

Recent news out of Angola has raised the stakes in new President Joao Lourenco’s push to differentiate his tenure from that of his predecessor. Though he became president in September 2017, it was not until a year later that Lourenco assumed control of the ruling party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), significantly bolstering his authority in a country where the distinction between the party and the government has never been entirely clear. The world got a hint of how he intends to use his newly consolidated power last month with the arrest of Jose Filomeno dos Santos, son of former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, whose tenure in office lasted thirty-eight years.  The younger dos Santos had served as the chair of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund until January, when he was removed in the wake of reports regarding inappropriate payments to the fund’s asset manager. (His sister, Isabel dos Santos, was removed from her position at the head of the state oil company, Sonagol, last year as well.) By March he was facing criminal charges, stemming from allegations of an illicit transfer of half-a-billion dollars from Angola’s central bank to an account in the UK. His arrest, along with others in recent days including that of a former transportation minister and the head of the Eduardo dos Santos Foundation, suggest that Lourenco is committed to a public and dramatic break from the past.  But it remains to be seen what kind of change is in store for Angola. For many years, the dos Santos family seemed inseparable from the MPLA, which derived its legitimacy not just from the party’s history of resistance to Portuguese colonialism, but also its ultimate victory in the long civil war that ended in 2002. That the MPLA drove out the oppressors and ended the war was enough for a time. It is not enough anymore.  With a majority of Angolans too young to remember personal experiences of the war, President Lourenco may be working on a new narrative about legitimacy in Angola, one in which leadership is based on taking on some of the country’s endemic corruption and lifting more Angolans out of poverty. But he must contend with a party and governing structures that were not created for these purposes, and with elites threatened by change. Whether he will undertake a transformational project or simply replace the old guard with his own loyalists will be determined not simply by his intentions, but also by the capacity of the MPLA to reform, and the degree to which Angolans themselves demand fundamental change.

Chidi Odinkalu and Ayisha Osori have published a book in Nigeria that says Obasanjo and his associates and supporters essentially stole $500 million to fund the incumbent’s efforts to amend the constitution so that he could run for a third term. The authors are both highly credible human rights lawyers. Among other things, Odinkalu is the former head of the Nigerian Human Rights Council and Osori is the former CEO of the Nigerian Women’s Trust Fund. The title of their book is Too Good to Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man in Africa. It is widely understood that former President Olusegun Obasanjo sought to change the constitution so that he could run a third time for the presidency in 2007, but Obasanjo has always denied that was his intention. In any event, the effort to change the constitution generated widespread opposition, and eventually was defeated in the National Assembly. Obasanjo supported his party’s successful candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua, for the presidency. Since he left office, former present Obasanjo has remained active politically, though his influence has declined. Politics everywhere can be expensive—the U.S. presidential election in 2008, including primaries, cost $2.8 billion. But, according to the book, among the sources of the $500 million illicitly used in Obasanjo’s failed third-term bid was the Excess Crude Account, a sovereign saving account funded by the difference in the world oil price and the price upon which the national budget was based. When the “Third Term Agenda” was at its high point in the mid-2000s, oil prices were high and the account was growing. Odinkalu and Osori also show that during his eight years in the presidency, Obasanjo exercised sole control over the national oil company, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Nigeria’s oil and gas is produced through joint ventures or joint agreements between the NNPC and private oil companies. The Nigerian government receives the lion’s share of the profits, which in turn make up the majority of government foreign exchange. Some of the commentary in the Nigerian media on Odinkalu and Osori’s book makes the point that in some ways, Obasanjo’s administration was a continuation of the way things were done during the generation of military rule when public funds were used for political purposes. The Obasanjo administration, ostensibly a civilian government, was in fact a transitional episode between military and civilian ways of governing, and not just with respect to oil. For example, Obasanjo on occasion ignored Supreme Court decisions that he did not like, as had his military predecessors. His successor, however, obeyed Supreme Court decisions, as have subsequent presidents.  

Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (nicknamed Teodorin), vice president of Equatorial Guinea, son of his country’s president, and heir apparent to that office, made headlines this week. According to media reports, authorities in Brazil seized some $16 million in cash and high-end watches from his delegation, where he had reportedly traveled for medical treatment. Brazilian law limits the amount of cash visitors can bring into the country to $2,400.  This sort of awkward international incident is not particularly novel for Vice President Obiang. In 2016, Swiss authorities seized eleven of his luxury cars as part of an investigation into corruption and money laundering that culminated in his conviction for embezzlement, in abstentia, in a Paris court last year. In 2014, he resolved the U.S. Justice Department’s charges that he used his country’s public funds for private gain by reaching a $30 million settlement with federal authorities, requiring him to sell his Malibu mansion, a Ferrari, and some of his Michael Jackson memorabilia. None of these previous brushes with the law seem to have cramped the vice president’s style, much of which he documents on Instagram.  The lavish lifestyle, luxury goods, and very public nature of Teodorin Obiang’s wealth echo the habits of his father, who has ruled his small, oil-rich country for a jaw-dropping thirty-nine years. They may be about more than champagne tastes. To some degree, they are about showmanship, and a performance of power meant to establish his place in a hierarchy. With each outrageous extravagance, a message is being sent—he is formidable, to be feared and obeyed, and legitimately in a position of authority.  Of course, political leaders wielding flashy trappings of wealth as personal hallmarks are no strangers to more powerful countries like the United States. But in a place like Equatorial Guinea, where despite an extraordinarily high GDP per capital over three quarters of the population lives in poverty, it may be especially important as a leadership style. Equatorial Guinea’s governing authorities have proven adept at suppressing dissent but not at the most basic service delivery. Connective tissue between popular demand and government priorities is nearly nonexistent. It may be that making extraordinarily ostentatious acquisitions is simply what it means to wield political power in the context the Obiang dynasty has created, one that is devoid of democratic or legal accountability. A degree of notoriety for corruption is beside the point. 

Education in Nigeria is in dire straits, and many Nigerians are acutely aware and concerned. At present, Nigeria has the highest percentage in the world of children not enrolled in school, and it is much higher in the north of the country than in the south. Overall, the UN Human Development Index ranks Nigeria 152nd out of 188 countries. In the north, up to 12 million are enrolled in madrassas which do not prepare them to participate in a modern economy and are generally outside of government oversight. Public education is chronically underfunded. For countries seeking to develop rapidly, a UN agency recommends countries spend 25 percent of their national budget on education, as they do in Ethiopia; for Nigeria, the 2018 figure is 7.1 percent. During his visit in March, Bill Gates chided officials for underinvestment in human capital. But, education expansion and reform is not easy. The education function is divided between federal, state, and local governments. As with other aspects of national life, corruption is said to be ubiquitous. Teachers often go for long periods without being paid, and strikes, especially at the university level, are frequent. At independence and shortly thereafter, the Nigerian educational system was among the strongest in Africa. As with so many other elements of national life, the long period of military rule—from 1967 to 1998, with a brief civilian interregnum—blighted education. Military governments viewed educators, especially at universities, as potential opposition. As in other developing countries, the popular demand for education is strong. Accordingly, successive military governments expanded the number of universities while never providing sufficient funding. This process continued after the restoration of civilian government in 1999, where states established universities, usually with inadequate funding. At the primary and secondary level, education had largely been in the hands of missionaries. But, in the aftermath of the civil war, the military government closed church schools (and hospitals) and “nationalized” them, to the detriment of their quality. The civilian government of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 permitted the establishment of private universities under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. Since then, seventy-four have been established that were open as of 2017. Most have church affiliations of some sort, and most are in the southern part of the country. However, the American University of Nigeria is secular and is located in Adamawa state in the north. (I am on the board of the American University of Nigeria.) The quality of many of the private universities is high, but there are tuition charges, while the public universities are largely free. There are now many private primary and secondary schools, and they educate the majority of students in Lagos state.  As with other aspects of Nigerian life, traditional state functions, such as education, are becoming privatized. There is a clear hierarchy. Wealthy Nigerians send their children abroad to Ghana or elsewhere, less wealthy ones send them to private schools through the university level, while the poor—the overwhelming majority of the population—are dependent on state facilities.   

Panelists at CFR roundtable Corruption, Gender Inequality, and the #MeToo Movement addressed the need to mainstream gender into anti-corruption efforts and discussed the impact of gendered forms of corruption, such as “sextortion”—a term that describes the abuse of power to obtain sexual benefits.

Latin America’s judiciaries are engulfed in corruption scandals. In Colombia a former Supreme Court member was arrested on charges of corruption and bribery. In Peru multiple judges stand accused of trading favorable rulings and shortened sentences for money and perks. In Guatemala, lawyers and justices face charges of rigging Supreme Court appointments. And in Mexico the attorney general's office fired one of its own for delving too deep into alleged bribes to the former head of the national oil company Pemex, a close confidant of President Enrique Pena Nieto. These acts, more than similar crimes by dirty politicians, undermine the region’s fragile rule of law, revealing deep-seated corruption among those responsible for holding others to account. They show that the widespread legal reforms of the last two decades, while necessary, weren’t enough. The next essential step is professionalizing the judiciary itself. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and others have overhauled their legal systems, introducing oral trials, arbitration, and mediation alternatives, and strengthening due process and the presumption of innocence. As part of larger shifts from inquisitorial to adversarial systems, these efforts have begun to make justice more transparent, effective, and fair. Many Latin American countries have also passed specific anticorruption measures. Brazil criminalized bid-rigging, bribery, and fraud in public procurement. Argentina outlawed nepotism, and along with Peru and Colombia upped the penalties for corporate bribery. Mexico created a new national anti-corruption system, explicitly outlawing bribes, embezzlement, and the failure to disclose conflicts of interest, and creating a dedicated prosecutor to go after perpetrators. Legislators also gave prosecutors new corruption-fighting tools. Brazil’s successful Lava Jato (Carwash) investigations, leading to more than 200 convictions of politicians and business leaders for bribery and kickbacks, including former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have hinged on plea bargaining, introduced to the fight against organized crime by a 2013 law. Nearly a dozen nations in the region claim similar statutes that enable court officials to ease sentences in exchange for information on accomplices and higher-ups. Yet as the ongoing wave of scandals attests, beyond new laws Latin American nations need judges and lawyers able and willing to wield them. This in turn requires a professional legal bureaucracy. Although harder to conjure than legislation, a qualified civil service is possible to build. Look, for instance, at Chile and Brazil. Chile has a long history of meritocratic public hiring, drawing on credentials and examinations rather than party links. Attesting to the respect afforded their profession, judges, like other bureaucrats, often come from well-heeled families and elite schools. In the wake of Chile's own corruption scandals, one involving former president Michelle Bachelet's son and daughter-in-law, the government expanded efforts to inculcate legal impartiality and professionalism beyond just the courtroom, introducing civic and ethics education to elementary schools nationally. Brazil’s merit-based system for choosing most judges and prosecutors was inscribed in its 1988 Constitution. Over the last 30 years its judicial core has evolved, the politically appointed judges of the past retiring and their replacements rising up through the new technocratic process. Judge Sergio Moro of Lava Jato fame is but one of these new professionals, respected and well remunerated for their technical acumen and political autonomy. Throughout the region citizen anger over corruption is growing. Promises to take on widespread graft helped to catapult Mexico’s president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to a historic victory. Corruption preoccupied Colombians heading to polls last spring, and ranks high among voter concerns in Brazil’s upcoming presidential race. In Peru it brought down the previous president and threatens the current head of state, Martin Vizcarra, if he can’t harness the momentum to his cause through a pending referendum. Yet what Latin American leaders must now do is to change career incentives, ensuring that judicial robes aren’t bought but earned, and that merit trumps connections. They need to create respected and rewarding professional paths, enticing the talented and ambitious to the fight against corruption rather than succumb to its temptations. Brazil and Chile show that changing the makeup of the justice system is possible. But a process that takes a generation will surely test the patience of Latin America's voters. View article originally published on Bloomberg.

Tom Iseghohi is founder and executive chairman of the G57 and an executive vice president at the Hudson Consulting Group’s global consulting practice based in New York. One in every six Africans is a Nigerian and 10 percent of all black people on earth are Nigerians. By 2050, Nigeria will become the third largest nation on earth and 67 percent of the population will be below thirty years of age. Nigeria has been at the precipice many times, but always seems to find its way back. Today, Nigeria is back at the brink again, but will this time be different? We think so, and in July 2017, we created the G57 to emphasize the opportunities and minimize the risks in a nonpartisan manner. The G57 is a nonpartisan group of fifty-seven successful Nigerian professionals from every corner of Nigeria and around the globe. The combination of democracy and a productive economy is what Nigeria needs to stabilize and to lead African stability and growth into the future. To operationalize this thinking, the G57 has mobilized a national grassroots citizen engagement organ which presently has one thousand members and two hundred fifty thousand followers. This organ, branded “PUP Culture,” is based on the fundamental building blocks of prosperity, unity, and peace, which have been the enduring cultural values in every Nigerian tribe. As the nation prepares for the general elections in 2019, the G57 seeks a new set of ideas and capabilities to solve Nigeria’s fundamental problems. We are facilitating voter education, grassroots mobilization, a shift from tribal to issues-based debates, and systemic adjustments. The right systemic adjustments, political stability, technical partnerships, and strong foreign investment have the potential to grow Nigeria’s GDP from $400 billion in 2016 to $4 trillion in eight years. There are numerous examples of such exponential growth in Nigeria. For example, a company invested $280 million in 2003 and by 2010, the company was valued at over $45 billion. The United States is a natural partner for entrenching democracy, fighting corruption, and expanding trade, security, and investment. Nigeria in turn is a critical partner with respect to Nigerian immigration, its democratic values, and its shared security goals. Nigeria cannot seem to get past its reputation for insecurity, corruption, fraud, and human rights issues. Both Christians and Muslims are slaughtered daily. The culprits have been labeled Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram, but there is more to the story. Some experts believe the violence results from economic issues that are purposefully amplified by political actors, but are also exacerbated by an exploding population and the shrinking of grazing lands due to climate change. Add to this the arrival of foreign fighters and small arms and the regional fallout of the crises of Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Nigeria’s issues are multi-faceted and systemic. They revolve around weak private and public institutions as well as the government’s lack of capacity to solve problems. Nigerians, who are generally patriotic and passionate about the country, are frustrated, poor, and losing confidence in successive governments. But they remain committed to the Nigerian project. Average Nigerians are agreeable to a liberal democracy: according to a recent poll, 81 percent of Nigerians do not care about the religion or tribe of their leaders. For more on Nigeria, Matthew Page and John Campbell provide an overview of its politics, history, and culture, including the threat of Boko Haram and religious conflicts in their new book, Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know, which was published by Oxford University Press in July.

The centenary of the birthday of Nelson Mandela is on July 18, and the UN has therefore established it as “Mandela International Day” to commemorate the values of South Africa’s first “non-racial” president and his service to humanity. It is a major public holiday in South Africa. Among other celebrations, the Nelson Mandela Foundation sponsors an annual address. Former President Barack Obama will give this year’s address in the presence of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The venue will be a Johannesburg stadium, with an audience of fifteen thousand expected. Nelson Mandela is associated with democracy, the rule of law, racial reconciliation, social justice, and an outward looking South African foreign policy that has a strong focus on human rights. Far from trying to hang on to power, he served only one term as president. However, some African radicals, notably Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe, have accused Mandela of “selling out” the country’s black majority to the white minority, thus preserving white economic privilege. President Obama is widely popular in South Africa though he faces criticism for not having devoted enough attention to Africa during his presidency. Mandela’s democratic values and the rule of law were severely tested during the presidential administration of Jacob Zuma, which lasted from 2009 to 2018. Zuma's administration was tarnished by accelerating public corruption, personal corruption scandals, and an authoritarian style of governance. Under Zuma, South Africa followed an increasingly inward looking forward policy with a greatly diminished focus on human rights. The former president is currently facing corruption charges in court. His son, a business associate of the notorious Gupta brothers, is now under arrest for corruption. The Guptas are widely accused of “state capture”—exercising undue influence over the Zuma administration—and are currently sought by the police. Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa since January, was a close colleague of Nelson Mandela and regularly associates himself with the Mandela legacy, seeking to restore the late president’s values as South Africa’s lodestar. Domestically, overcoming corruption and cronyism is difficult and progress is slow. With respect to foreign policy, however, Ramaphosa appears to be moving quickly to reinstate Mandela’s values and to reassert South African leadership. Ramaphosa has successfully secured one of the “Africa” seats on the UN Security Council, and has already signaled that protection of human rights will be a theme. His foreign minister, Lindiwe Sislulu, is the daughter of Walter and Albertina Sisulu, two major icons of South Africa’s struggle for non-racial democracy. Ramaphosa was a close partner of Mandela. He was the leading negotiator for the African National Congress at the Congress for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA), the forum where South Africa’s transition to “non-racial democracy” was negotiated. He was also actively involved in framing South Africa’s constitution, which has among the most sweeping protections of human rights of any constitution in the world. Mandela privately wanted Ramaphosa to succeed him as president, but he deferred to ANC party cadres that supported Thabo Mbeki, who had been in exile during the anti-apartheid struggle. 

The Nigerian formal judicial system, based on colonial precedent, is notoriously slow and often expensive. In effect, accessibility to justice is limited, and some would say its non-existent for the majority of Nigerians that are poor. Hence the popularity of courts conducted by traditional and religious rulers (many times the same individuals). These are often of colonial or pre-colonial origin. Islamic courts based on Sharia, or Islamic law, are especially popular in the predominately-Muslim parts of the country. Such courts have credibility with the people, especially in rural areas, and, as a practical matter, government officials usually accept their decisions. (Appeals to the formal judicial system from traditional courts are possible, but very expensive.)  Unable to rely on the state, urban Nigerians are also finding alternative ways to address their grievances. Some are turning to a radio show, “The Bakete Family,” hosted by Ahman Isah and broadcast by Human Rights Radio six days a week from Abuja. Participants reportedly present themselves at the studio or call in. Those selected present the alleged injustices they have suffered, ranging from unjustified firings to domestic disputes. The show names and shames government officials and unresponsive departments and also tries to mediate disputes, especially domestic ones. On occasion, it publicizes the phone numbers of government officials, urging listeners to call them to demand they take action. There is anecdotal evidence that the method works—at least sometimes. There are no listener figures, but media reports that there are large crowds that gather outside the show’s studio each morning.  “Shaming” would appear to be especially effective in a profoundly religious country, such as Nigeria. Ahman Isah says, “The laws are there, but the enforcement is nothing.” According to Isah, “It is as good as not being there. The laws only favor the rich and the mighty in the country, ordinary Nigerians are not being protected by law.” But, he also says, “One who has nothing has God, and one who has God has everything.” Most Nigerians would probably agree. For more on Nigeria, Matthew Page and I provide an overview of its politics, history, and culture, including the threat of Boko Haram and religious conflicts in our new book, Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know, which was published by Oxford University Press in July.