Financial Transparency Coalition

Opinion: The constitution of an investigative panel into the notorious $180 million Halliburton bribery case by the Federal Government (FG) can only be viewed by most Nigerians as diversionary and wasteful; thus only its immediate disbandment can assuage the strong feelings and damaging insinuations its obnoxious existence is already eliciting across the country. What further evidence is the government seeking to unearth that it had to set up this high-powered inter-institutional committee headed by the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro, for which it has reportedly approved millions of naira to hop from one Western capital to another searching...

The recent conviction and sentence of an American billionaire, Bernard Madoff, to 150 years in prison for investment fraud may have again brought to the fore the need to strengthen Nigeria’s justice system in order to bring those who contravene the law, especially the rich to book. DAVIDSON IRIEKPEN writes.

Two human rights groups, Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) and Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), yesterday called on the Federal Government, to urgently begin the prosecution of Halliburton and its officials in Nigeria for their involvement and complicity in the Halliburton $180 million bribery scandal.

ALEXANDRIA, VA. -- A former Nigerian telecommunications executive testified Wednesday that his former business partners delivered $100,000 to then-Rep. William Jefferson after the Democratic congressman requested a percentage of profits and revenue in a joint venture with a Kentucky technology company he was promoting.