In nearly five secretive years in power, Nigeria's Gen. Sani Abacha built a reputation for authoritarian, sometimes brutal rule. He was less known -- but in terms of his legacy to Nigeria, perhaps more important -- for overseeing a web of corruption that Nigerians and oil industry sources say plundered billions of dollars from the country.

yet buhari said abacha was not corrupt!

They took kickbacks from foreign companies for licenses to search for oil in the basin and delta of the Niger River and offshore. They got bribes from construction firms that won contracts to build drilling rigs and pipelines.

In recent years, Abacha, his allies and top officials have added a new form of corruption that is killing the Nigerian economy -- the siphoning of money used by Nigeria's oil refineries to turn crude into gasoline. Finance and Oil Ministry officials argue openly in the Nigerian press over who is responsible for diverting more than $2 billion from the four state-owned refineries in recent years, but the refineries' ruin creates an artificial fuel shortage for this nation of more than 100 million people.

Nigeria is thus forced to import refined fuels, such as gasoline, and, traders say, Abacha and his cronies controlled that trade too, skimming off a percentage. The government subsidizes the sale price of gasoline and other fuels, but Abacha loyalists among the officer corps and civil service divert much of the available supply to sell on the black market or to neighboring countries. The fuel shortage has forced the economy into near depression, leaving millions of people poorer and sicker.

hmm we hear that pdp in power ruined our refineries. But from this, we see that during abacha era, our refineries were being destroyed and buhari was ptf chairman who did not speak against the corruption. So much for mai gaskiya!

"In Nigeria, corruption isn't part of government, it's the object of government," said a Nigerian political scientist who asked not to be named. For 28 of the 38 years since Nigeria gained independence from Britain, the country has been ruled by the military, and Nigerians say corruption has grown steadily. For the past two years, Transparency International, a Berlin-based organization that monitors corruption, has conducted surveys of businessmen that have ranked Nigeria as the world's most corrupt place to do business.

hmm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/nigeria/stories/corrupt060998.htm