AfDB president Adesina pleads for second term

Akinwumi Adesina, the head of the African Development Bank (AfDB), appealed on Wednesday, August 26, 2020 for a second term in office after an alleged corruption and poor governance case filed against him that ended after he was cleared in an independent probe.

In a speech at the AfDB’s annual meetings, Adesina formally requested a second term as president, declaring that he was “doing it with an acute sense of duty and commitment.”

“I do it to serve Africa and our bank, in an unbiased way, to the best of the abilities that God has given me,” he said.

Adesina’s reappointment on Thursday at the helm of the 56-year-old bank is considered a formality as he is the sole candidate.

The future of the flamboyant former Nigerian farming minister clouded this year when whistleblowers alleged his watch had been tarred by graft, poor management, personal enrichment and favouritism.

He was cleared by the organisation’s ethics committee, but the United States then intervened, demanding an independent investigation.

Adesina, 60, fought back angrily, backed by Nigeria, the biggest of the AfDB’s shareholders.

A three-person outside panel, led by former Irish president Mary Robinson alongside Gambia’s Chief Justice Hassan Jallow and the World Bank’s former integrity vice president, Leonard McCarthy, carried out its own review.

Its report, issued last month, said Adesina had been properly investigated and that the panel “concurs with the (ethics) committee in respect of all the allegations” against him.

Adesina, the son of a farming family, became in 2015 the first Nigerian to head the bank, one of the world’s five biggest multilateral lenders and an important but often unseen player in economic development.