African press review 25 August 2015

Nigeria's new leader says judicial bottlenecks are obstructing the fight against corruption; opposition senators are against a graft probe of previous government officials; and a Nigerian judge faces an investigation for "husband snatching".  

We stay in Nigeria where the press is offering robust coverage of perceived frustrations by the country’s news leaders about the slow pace of justice dispensation in what is arguably Africa’s most corrupt country.

The Nigerian Tribune takes up complaints by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo about undue bureaucratic processes obstructing the government’s efforts to tackle corruption. Osinbajo was addressing the 55th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association in Abuja, just three days after President Muhammadu Buhari described corruption as the greatest human rights violation ever as he opened the gathering.

Several Nigerian papers have been littered with shocking accounts of how lawmakers of the previous ruling party have been trying to block the probing of a former director of operations at the economic and financial crimes unit. Ibrahim Lamorde allegedly diverted 1 trillion naira of proceeds of properties seized and auctioned by the agency between 2003 and 2007. 

Punch reports that the new government is keen on investigating top officials of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration over a billion-naira loan approved by the National Assembly in 2014 for arms procurement to fight Boko Haram, and 15 million dollars (13 million euros) meant for the purchase of arms.

The newspaper recalls that 9.3 million dollars in cash was found stashed in three suitcases transported by two Nigerians and an Israeli at Lanseria Airport, north of Johannesburg in September 2014, while the second amount was seized three weeks after. Even more shocking was the discovery by South African police that the private jet involved belonged to the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Ayo Oritsejafor.

Nigerians may be expecting too much from President Buhari, according to the Guardian. According to the newspaper, the prayer of the average religious person in Nigeria is to have the opportunity to get up there around power and cut their share of what is expected to be for everybody.

And the Guardian concludes with an even more pessimistic note. The clock is ticking and in just three years and some months, Nigerians will decide again, while waiting "to wake up in a new Nigeria".

And a Nigerian judge is facing an investigation for "husband snatching". Punch says the chief justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, gave Judge Olamide Oloyede of the Osun State judiciary 14 days to explain herself.

This was after a mother of four accused Oloyede of cohabiting with her husband. The plaintiff says she has irrefutable evidence that the judge now addresses her children’s father as “my husband”, including video footage of her husband driving the judge’s car in broad daylight.