At last, UK releases 2009 letter of “Ibori MP,” Tony Baldry

The British Government has finally released—but partly—the September 2009 letter on behalf of former Delta State governor James Ibori that it received from a Conservative Member of Parliament, Tony Baldry.

The letter, which ignited a Freedom of Information (FOI) controversy in 2010, demonstrates why Mr. Baldry did not want it in the hands of the public: while he did not make a direct case for Ibori or his associates, the letter was a disguised, intensely-sympathetic appeal to the government to intervene on their behalf.

The granting of the FOI request was made in a letter dated July 31, 2012, from Jonathan Drew, a Deputy Head of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, to author and blogger Richard Wilson.

In it, Mr. Drew said the decision to release Mr. Baldry’s letter followed an internal review of the events of 2010, and that disclosure of the letter would, in fact, enhance public understanding of the UK’s relationship with Nigeria. He also explained the decision to withhold certain portions of the letter, saying of those sections, “public interest in withholding this information is greater than the public interest in disclosing.”

Mr. Baldry’s infamous letter to the government followed a meeting with the then Nigerian President, Umaru Yar’Adua. At that time the MP for Banbury, Baldry, now Sir Baldry, the Member for North Oxfordshire, wrote it to the Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, at that time the Rt. Hon. David Milliband, MP, and it became quickly regarded in Nigeria as an effort to obstruct the trial of associates of Mr. Ibori.