Russia's more corrupt than Nigeria.

Russian police uncovered 35,000 cases of corruption in the first nine months of this year, including alleged crimes by four deputy governors and five regional ministers.

Major bribe-taking increased by 17.5 percent from January to September compared with the same period of 2009, the Interior Ministry said in a statement distributed to reporters today. The average size of a bribe increased 1.5 times to around $1,400.

“We understand that you can’t overcome corruption in one year,” Alexander Nazarov, deputy head of the ministry’s economic crimes department, said at a briefing outside Moscow. “We are trying to minimize this problem so it doesn’t affect the development of the economy.”

Russia is the world’s most corrupt major economy, according to Berlin-based Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index released yesterday, sliding to 154th among 178 countries and placing it alongside Tajikistan and Kenya.

While President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to combat corruption when he was elected in 2008, Russians surveyed at the end of July ranked the inability of Vladimir Putin, now the prime minister, to deal with the issue during his 10 years in power as the administration’s biggest failure.

Police said on Oct. 21 they were seeking the former deputy head of government in the Moscow region and his wife, believed to be in the U.S., over the alleged embezzlement of $1 billion. The authorities, who have detained the region’s former deputy finance chief in the same case, said they managed to recover $820 million of the misappropriated assets.

Russians pay bribes totaling $300 billion a year, equivalent to almost a quarter of gross domestic product, according to Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti- Corruption Committee. Medvedev’s promises to reduce corruption won’t succeed unless law enforcement is improved, he said in an interview yesterday.

Another Consensus Option Coming•As Northern Leaders Insist Jonathan Drops Presidential Bid

Another form of consensus option is set to emerge on the political scene, following the understanding reached by some leading political figures to adopt what is called a “national consensus candidate.”
The bid is said to be a response to moves by the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) led by Alhaji Adamu Ciroma to ensure the emergence of a single aspirant among the presidential hopefuls who are members of the Peoples democratic Party (PDP) from the North.
Investigations by the Saturday Tribune revealed that the top political figures had compiled what looked like a record of performance of each of the notable aspirants within the PDP and other major parties and have come to the realisation of the need to burst the persistent ethnicisation of the electoral process, ahead of the 2011 election.
A source, in the know about the deal, said that the leaders preferred to keep their names out of print for now and that the political figures are already working out a committee that would be similar to the 17-member Consensus Committee raised by the Ciroma team.
“Worried by the threat to Nigeria’s stability and the need to overhaul the political setting as far as the 2011 race is concerned, a team of elders is working on the emergence of a national consensus candidate, as opposed to the sectional consensus candidate being worked on by some northern leaders,” a source said.
Other sources with knowledge of the development said that the team of leaders had met more than twice on the idea and that they have already put together what could stand as an assessment of each of the leading aspirants.
One of the conditions, according to the source, is that the candidate that would be adopted for 2011 may be asked to stand for election for only one term, while a younger candidate would be groomed to lead the consolidation of Nigeria’s development from 2015.
It was gathered that the prognosis of this team is swinging the direction of President Goodluck Jonathan, who will be presented the final report of the team.

The team is said to be of the view that if Jonathan agreed to quit office in 2015, he should be supported to lay the foundation for Nigeria’s true development, while younger elements like Mallam Nuhu Ribadu and Mallam Nasiru el-Rufai would be groomed to take charge afterwards.

The group is already sending signals to Jonathan that if he will stay in office only between 2011 and 2015, he should be named a national consensus candidate who will set the tone for Nigeria’s socio-economic growth.
It was learnt that the aspirants, already analysed by the group; include former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari; former military ruler, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida; former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; former National Security Adviser, General Aliyu Gusau; former anti-corruption chief, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu and the governor of Kwara State, Dr. Bukola Saraki.
It was gathered that the team had already discovered that besides the power of incumbency, Jonathan appeals to a group of Nigerians who want to do away with liabilities of the past.
On Jonathan’s Bid
The northern political leaders on the platform of Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) are not about to give up fight on their demand for shift of presidential power to the northern region, and hence have started moves towards taking a court action on the issue.
The Forum led by Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Saturday Tribune can report, has started seeking legal advice on how to go by their resolve to seek judicial intervention on their demands, amid plans to drag the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to court
A top member of the Forum disclosed that once the elders got a peg of how to handle the litigation from suggestions by seasoned lawyers, including Senior Advoceates of Nigeria, they would not hesitate in proceeding to the court to challenge PDP on the issue of zoning.
The elders, it was learnt, are more interested in taking on the PDP on its constitution which they stressed recognised zoning, and the need to seek the court leave in compelling it to obey its constitution on the matter.
By implication, the North has now been leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that it gets back political power in 2011, following its conviction that any attempt by the PDP to make the incumbent president extend his government by 2011 meant that he would be doing so at the expense of the North.
More than three weeks ago, the NPLF, through Mallam Ciroma, had issued a week ultimatum through a press statement in which he called on PDP to prevail on President Goodluck Jonathan to withdraw from the 2011 presidential race, although Ciroma never specified any action his Forum would take at the expiration of the ultimatum
Already, some individuals had filed different applications in court on the issue of zoning, whereas the efforts being made by the northern leaders, according to some top shots, are meant to harmonise different views and positions on it and to approach the court as a formidable team.
The plan by the elders, as disclosed, is to mobilise most political juggernauts from the northern region to storm the court on the day the case would be presented to give an impression of seriousness on their preparedness to fight the issue of zoning to a logical conclusion.
The Forum on the other hand had initiated the process of picking a consensus representative among the four presidential aspirants who had collected nomination forms to run on the platform of PDP in 2011 presidential election.
Findings have, however, revealed that the elders who had commissioned a survey on the chances of each of the aspirants have been engaged in series of talks with each of them to accept any one of them who might have been selected by the 17 men saddled with the task of selecting the consensus candidate for the North.
As of the close of this week, the four aspirants, had restated their pledge to abide by any decision by the men on the issue of consensus candidacy for the North.