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More than a year ago the then Attorney
General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa, wrote a letter to
his counterpart in the US asking for the names of the implicated
Nigerians. This paper also reported that the Senate and House of
Representatives also wrote to US authorities requesting the list.

In April 2009 Mr. Aondoakaa told
journalists “we are going to constitute a committee … that will be
charged with the responsibility of gathering information. If the
quality of information we receive internally is sufficient for us to
commence prosecution, we will commence prosecution.” Mr. Aondoakaa also
added that the prosecution would be dependent “on the cooperation we
have from the U.S. government.”

At the time that Mr. Aondoakaa was
blowing hot and cold NEXT had already published exclusive reports
listing some of the most prominent Nigerian beneficiaries of the
bribes, based on court documents obtained in the US, UK and France.
They included at least three former Nigerian Heads of State – the late
Sani Abacha, Abdulsalam Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo, a former
Petroleum Minister Dan Etete and a former Group Managing Director of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Gaius Obaseki.

Nigerian authorities as is their
custom pretended to be unaware of the widely available evidence, and
appeared more interested in writing letters to foreign authorities and
blaming them for not cooperating. At that time we observed, in a news
report, that “our law enforcement authorities, notably Attorney General
Michael Aondoakaa, have lately been making noises but have in reality
done little to pursue those indicted in this scandal, which reveals us
as a nation that fully justifies its reputation as one of the world’s
leading cesspits for corruption and unrestrained graft.”

In the months since then nothing has
changed. Nigeria is no closer to getting to the roots of that scandal,
or to prosecuting the implicated officials than it was when the news
broke. This is in spite of the fact that the other countries whose
nationals were involved in the scandal have since taken action and
meted out necessary punishments. Mr. Etete, sentenced to three years in
prison by a Paris criminal court in 2007, was in 2009 fined $10.5
million by a French Court of Appeal after he was convicted of money
laundering.

The money in question is believed to be
part of the Halliburton bribe payments. In September 2007, just before
this conviction, Mr. Aondoakaa wrote a letter to French prosecutors
requesting that the prosecution of Mr. Etete be suspended.

Mr. Etete has been on the run from
French authorities, and was convicted in absentia. If anyone thought
that his conviction in Paris would spur the Nigerian authorities to
bring him to justice at home, they were wrong. From all available
evidence Nigeria’s law enforcement agents are neither interested in Mr.
Etete, nor in making efforts to ensure that he is extradited to France
to face his jail term.

Mr. Aondoakaa inaugurated the
Halliburton probe Committee on April 21, 2009, and gave it eight weeks
to complete its assignment and submit a report.

Today, one year later, the Committee
has yet to submit its report. As expected, all that is coming from the
government is more empty words. “If the report gets to him, I can
assure you the Attorney General will act on the recommendations and
based on what the law says,” a spokesperson for Bello Adoke, the new
Justice Minister (who replaced Mr. Aondoakaa) said last week.

These facile assurances from Nigerian
authorities have gone on for far too long. If Acting President Jonathan
is indeed serious about making a difference in government and tackling
corruption, he should not only order the immediate release of the
Halliburton report, but also issue a query to the Committee for sitting
on the report for this long.