African Bar Association addresses AfDB spat

The African Bar Association (ABA) has deliberated on the needless controversy surrounding the affairs of the African Development Bank (AfDB), the continent’s leading financial institution. As previously reported in Legalbrief Today, the US and the AfDB have fallen out over allegations of corruption against the bank's Nigerian head, Akinwumi Adesina. The board of governors of the 55-year-old institution last week met to discuss whether to bring in an outside investigator to probe his conduct just days after the US rejected an initial inquiry that cleared him. US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin personally signed a letter to the board rejecting an internal investigation that cleared Adesina. Besides the core 54 African countries, the US is one of the 27 non-regional members of the AfDB and its second largest shareholder. The association said the allegations were thoroughly investigated by the Bank’s ethics committee which exonerated Adesina. Ordinarily, this should put the matter to rest. ‘The position of the association is that, though such shareholders have a right of say in the affairs of the bank, they have no right to impose their views or private procedures on the institution,’ said ABA president Hannibal Uwaifo in a statement received by Legalbrief. He further warned that the debacle ‘could spell a gradual descent into an abyss marking the deliberate destruction of one of Africa’s surviving legacies that unites the continent’.