Nigeria demands stolen assets back from UK after Cameron slip

Nigeria’s president has said he does not want an apology from David Cameron for describing his country as “fantastically corrupt” but a return of the billions taken out of Nigeria and held in British banks. Muhammadu Buhari was speaking in London as Mr Cameron’s global anti-corruption summit threatened to be overshadowed by the prime minister’s identification of Nigeria and Afghanistan as among the most corrupt countries in the world.

Mr Cameron was chatting to Queen Elizabeth about the anti-corruption summit at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday when a camera recorded his remarks. Foreign secretary Philip Hammond on Wednesday said the prime minister had been “merely stating a fact”, but Mr Cameron himself praised the efforts of Nigeria and Afghanistan to tackle corruption.

Asked if he wanted an apology from Mr Cameron, the Nigerian president said he was more interested in recovering the fruits of corruption in Nigeria which had found a haven in London. “What would I do with an apology? I need something tangible,” he said.

Nigeria said last week that an estimated $15 billion (€13.1 billion) had been stolen from the Nigerian people through corrupt arms contracts under the previous government and Mr Buhari said corruption was also endemic in the country’s oil sector.

“Nigerian crude oil is being stolen on an industrial scale and exported, with the proceeds laundered through world financial centres by transnational organised criminals,” he said.

Anti-corruption activists have highlighted London’s role as a safe haven for corrupt and laundered money from around the world but Mr Cameron expressed the hope that Thursday’s anti-corruption summit would make a real impact.

“For too long there has been a taboo about tackling this issue head-on. The summit will change that. Together we will push the fight against corruption to the top of the international agenda where it belongs,” he said.

Queen’s comments

The diplomatic difficulties over Mr Cameron’s remarks about Nigeria and Afghanistan came as London and Beijing sought to play down any discord over comments by the queen during a garden party at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday and caught on camera. During a conversation with a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police, the queen accused Chinese officials of being “very rude” to the British ambassador in advance of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Britain last year.

When Commander Lucy D’Orsi was introduced as the officer responsible for security during the visit, the queen said: “Oh, bad luck.” Ms D’Orsi described some difficult dealings with the Chinese advance party, during which the Chinese officials walked out of a meeting, threatening to call off Mr Xi’s visit.

“They were very rude to the ambassador,” the queen said.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson on Wednesday declined to criticise the queen’s comments, although they were blacked out of a BBC World broadcast report in China.

“President Xi’s visit to the UK last year was a very successful one. Both sides have made great efforts for the success of the visit and the two sides highly recognised that,” the spokesperson said.

“Both sides have expressed the hope that they would implement the outcomes of President Xi’s visit and push forwards a steady and stable rise of the bilateral relationship. This requires the common efforts of both sides.”

Mr Hammond, who was visiting Gibraltar on Wednesday, suggested that the exchange between Ms D’Orsi and the queen reflected the usual stress involved in organising a major visit.

“Big state visits are big logistic challenges. I was involved in this and yes, it got a bit stressful on both sides. But it was a great state visit – everybody agrees, hugely successful – and our relationship with China is very strong and has been greatly strengthened by the success of that visit,” he said.