In Authority Stealing, Wale Adebanwi details the struggles and (limited) successes of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under its founding chairman, Nuhu Ribadu (2003–7). The EFCC was created by an Act of Parliament at the behest of President Olusegun Obasanjo, soon after Nigeria’s transition from military rule in 1999. While its establishment signaled a new commitment to fight corruption, Adebanwi shows how from the start the EFCC was pitted against the political elite that created it. Separate chapters of the book deal with the EFCC’s campaigns against “419” fraudsters, Nigeria’s powerful governors, members of Parliament, the head of the Nigerian police, the vice president (and other would-be presidential candidates), and private bank officials. The central argument of the book is that Ribadu, driven by personal courage, commitment, and nationalism, took on the corrupt Nigerian elite in a contemporary reenactment of the David and Goliath struggle, winning several early battles but eventually losing the war as he was removed from his position by Obasanjo’s successor, President Umaru Yar’Adua, in the interest of protecting the guilty. Adebanwi concludes that absent “fundamental restructuring of state and society,” the problem of corruption will remain unsolved, despite “the [critical] efforts of the Nuhu Ribadus of Nigeria” (396).

Analytically the book does not go beyond previous studies of the EFCC published in the Journal of Modern African Studies (by Lawson in 2009 and Adebanwi and his co-author, Ebenezer Obadare, in 2010), but it is really a work of long-form journalism rather than scholarly analysis. It is an excellent, richly detailed source for readers with little knowledge of—but great interest in—the micro-underpinnings of the more visible macro-phenomenon of prebendal politics in Nigeria over the last decade, drawn primarily upon local media reporting and interviews with principals. It also works well as an inspirational morality tale, portraying Ribadu, and several other committed individuals, as heroes struggling to reclaim Nigeria’s future from the clutches of its corrupt elite. Although Ribadu was ultimately “beaten in the game of power in which he was embroiled” (348), he played the game, inspired many inside and outside of Nigeria, and perhaps showed the way forward—which reverberates through Adebanwi’s telling of the story, which is both a celebration of Nuhu Ribadu and a clarion call to other potential Nuhu Ribadus. One is reminded of the wisdom of Chinua Achebe’s elder in Anthills of the Savannah: “To some of us the Owner of the World has apportioned the gift to tell their fellows that the time to get up has finally come. To others He gives the eagerness to rise when they hear the call…. And then there are those others whose part is to wait and when the struggle is ended, to take over and recount its story.… It is the story, not the others, that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence” (Anchor, 1997:113–14).

The down side to the emphasis on individuals, and individual character, is that Ribadu’s institutional legacy is barely addressed, and most likely understated. While Adebanwi is clear about the wide praise for Ribadu, and bitter disappointment and frustration with his removal, he suggests that without Ribadu at the helm (or at least with Farida Waziri in his place) the EFCC was left completely adrift, as cases against the powerful whom Ribadu had targeted were quietly shelved and the politics of corruption returned to the status quo ante. This misses both the informal institutions underlying the politics of corruption—those in Yar’Adua’s networks were now protected, while those in Obasanjo’s became vulnerable, both of which contributed to consolidating Yar’Adua’s power within the informal system—and the extent to which Ribadu’s EFCC created “lock-in” effects by raising popular expectations and building durable institutional capacity. Indeed, a 2011 Human Rights Watch study of the EFCC’s record under Ribadu and Waziri found the two periods broadly comparable. Still, President Jonathan’s November 2011 appointment of Ibrahim Lamorde, Ribadu’s former right-hand man and “soul mate,” to head the EFCC boosted popular expectations and hope (even if his subsequent pardon of former Governor Diepreye Alameiyeseigha, the first governor convicted by the EFCC, confirmed that the game remains the same.)

Nevertheless, Adebanwi’s focus on courageous, committed, politically astute individuals reveals the foundation upon which change, however slow and difficult, is emerging in Nigeria. It should come as no surprise that this foundation is composed of personal networks—networks sustained by shared commitments to the rule of law. Nor should it be any surprise that these emergent networks of integrity are engaged in pitched battle with those that sustain the neopatrimonial state, operating at a distinct disadvantage—but like Achebe’s anthills, “surviving to tell the new grass of the savannah about last year’s brush fires” (28).