President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday promised to reveal
the names of former government officials who have voluntarily returned looted
funds to the coffers of the Federal Government in “due course”, saying that
early disclosure of their identities “may jeopardize the possibility of bigger
recoveries.”
Mustafa Adebayo Balogun, more known as Tafa Balogun, was
appointed Inspector General of the Nigeria Police Force on 6th of March 2002,
from the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police (Zone One in Kano),
shortly after the brutal assassination of an incumbent Minister of Justice and
Attorney General of Nigeria; Chief Bola Ige, on December 23, 2001. Tafa
Balogun, in his first public address to the Media as IGP, vowed to “fish out
those who killed Chief Bola Ige”. 
A fine technocrat who did not wear his position on his
sleeve, and known for tapping into his soft power of persuasion, Nhlanhla Nene
has now been shunted out of South Africa’s National Treasury. The man who was South Africa’s Finance Minister has been
forced to make way for an obscure politician, David van Rooyen, who was on the
backbenches of parliament.
One of Nigeria’s highest profile and best-regarded former
government ministers Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is caught up in a widening $2 billion
arms procurement scandal which has already led to the arrest of the former
national security adviser with former state governors, businessmen and the
governor of the central bank also roped in.
In our series of letters from African journalists,
novelist and writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani looks at the impact of new
economising measures in Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari, who came to office in May,
seems bent on making public office less and less attractive to the average
Nigerian "big man".