Nigeria, Feb. 26 -- Besides wars, disease, and violent militant groups, few forces have undermined law-based states in recent times as profoundly as corruption. Nowhere is its human cost more visible than in Nigeria. Broken roads, overcrowded classrooms, and failing hospitals are not abstract policy failures; they are the everyday consequences of public money stolen from the people. Yet a fundamental question remains largely unanswered, both in Nigeria and globally: who owns the proceeds of corruption?

In Ownership of Proceeds of Corruption in International Law, anti-corruption and human rights lawyer Kolawole Olaniyan offers a simple but radical answer: the people do.

Africa loses tens of billions of dollars each year to corruption and...