By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 4, 2008

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 3 -- The government of Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua has pressured its most prominent anti-corruption official to step down, weeks after the arrest of a powerful former governor from the ruling party on corruption charges.

The official, Nuhu Ribadu, said in an interview Thursday that he had not decided whether to resign. But a top official on his Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was unlikely Ribadu would be able to keep his position.

"There's no way he can stay at the commission," the official said.

Ribadu's departure has long been rumored after years in which he has targeted some of the most allegedly corrupt officials in one of the world's most corrupt nations. Among his targets have been several former governors prominent in Yar'Adua's ruling party, including James Ibori of Delta state, who was arrested last month on corruption and money-laundering charges.

The head of Nigeria's police force, Mike Okiro, announced last week that Ribadu had been ordered to attend a year-long training course at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, a research group in the city of Jos. Yar'Adua spokesman Olusegun Adeniyi, in an interview published Thursday in the Guardian newspaper in Nigeria, said the president supported Ribadu's reassignment.

"I believe in Ribadu and the work he is doing," Adeniyi said. But he criticized what he said was a "propaganda blitz" from Ribadu's office in the aftermath of Okiro's announcement.

"It's the timing that's most distressing. One of the biggest fishes in the corruption net had just been nabbed," said Wole Soyinka, a Nobel laureate in literature and outspoken critic of government misdeeds.

Soyinka called Ribadu "a bulldog" who had inspired confidence and trust among Nigerians. "A lot of damage has been done by his removal," he said.

Corruption has dogged Nigeria since the massive surge of oil production in the 1970s, when billions of dollars in profits began enriching a relatively small but powerful elite. The country consistently ranks among the world's worst in measures of poverty, development and health.

April's national elections, in which outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo used his ruling party's machinery to help elect Yar'Adua as his handpicked successor, were marked by violence, ballot-stuffing and other irregularities. Nigerian and international observers said the results failed to represent the will of voters. Ibori, the former governor, was among the leading financial supporters of Yar'Adua's campaign, according to reports.

Some observers have said they were convinced after Yar'Adua's first months in office that he was determined to bring a more ethical style of politics to Nigeria. The fate of Ribadu in recent months has been viewed as a test of Yar'Adua's resolve to break with the country's corrupt past.

"For all its problems, the EFCC has really been the only government institution that has been trying to hold wealthy, powerful ruling-party politicians to account for all of the many crimes that they have been accused of," said Chris Albin-Lackey, a Human Rights Watch investigator.