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Nigeria Leaders Licenced to Loot- Channel 4 News
Another damning report has exposed the depth of corruption in Nigeria, a country where the report said the leaders have been licensed to loot her treasuries.
The report by Channel 4 News, UK based news channel claimed that the breath-taking scale of official corruption is blighting the lives of more Nigerians than even the deadly insurgency.
It also quoted a former Nigerian government minister as saying that “Nigeria, is a country where you can disappear an elephant into the pocket of a shirt.”
The minister claimed that his civil servants offered him a 20 per cent slice off his department’s multi-billion dollar budget, assuring him they could bury their tracks.
Their expectation, he said, was that they too would be rewarded with a generous tranche of the loot.
The senior politician, who cannot be named for his own safety, alleged that he had been approached shortly after his appointment to cabinet, while staying in a hotel on a high-profile foreign trip.
He told Channel 4 News that he refused the offer, telling his civil servants that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.
“The scale of corruption by this country’s political elite is breaking people,” he said. “Some see it as the dispensing of patronage, so they can survive. But let’s say it straight. It is theft. Theft with a sense of entitlement.”
Jonathan Miller of Channel 4 News said that a couple of days later, “I was interviewing Nigeria’s flamboyant finance minister. Inevitably, before long, our conversation homed in on the C-word. “Your country has become a byword for corruption,” I said.
“I reject this completely!” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, shouted indignantly at me across the six-foot gap between our two armchairs in her ministerial office, strewn with photographs of herself with world leaders past and present.
“This country has a tendency for people to throw out wild numbers and because of the perception of corruption, people believe a lot of this. Nigeria is not a lawless country where you just lob accusations.”
Dr Ngozi, who earned her doctorate from MIT and who has spent years as a managing director of the World Bank, has a street named after her in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Half way along it, there’s a slum called Utako, whose residents live hand-to-mouth. Few have jobs; the rat-infested, malarial shanty lacks all basic services.
“The masses are suffering because of the greediness of our leaders,” said Stanley, a man in his late 20s, and one of the millions of Nigerians who do actually believe the “wild numbers” but are powerless in their poverty to hold their leaders to account.
“They are so corrupt don’t care about the masses,” he said. “All they care about is how to embezzle our money. If you look around this place, there is no sanitation, no water, no electricity. They don’t live in this environment.”
Nigeria now ranks as Africa’s largest economy, powered by vast oil reserves. Average incomes have doubled since 2010, yet a third of Nigeria’s people live on less than one pound a day.
For decades, it has been alleged that corrupt politicians were skimming huge sums off the national oil revenues – hundreds of billions of dollars according to the UN.
Most of Nigeria’s 500 languages don’t even have words for “million”, let alone “billion”, but people know the score. Power is perceived as the licence to loot.
Until last year, these “wild numbers” were indeed just “thrown around,” as the finance minister put it. Then, finally, a whistle-blower emerged who put some flesh on the bones.
The numbers were indeed wild. But he came with some pedigree. The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria was no ordinary whistle-blower.
Dr Lamido Sanusi, who had been awarded “Central Banker of the Year 2010″ by the Financial Times Banker magazine (an award which cited his “radical anti-corruption” campaign) discovered what he figured was a US$20-bn black hole in Nigeria’s national finances.
He wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan, detailing the mechanisms by which be believed an astronomical fraud had been committed.
He calculated that over the course of a year and a half, a billion dollars a month had been siphoned off national oil revenues. These “leakages” were, Dr Sanusi told the president, “unsustainable”.
For his trouble, the president first suspended, then fired him, accusing his central bank governor of “financial recklessness”.
Last month, Dr Sanusi, a blue-blooded descendent of the Kano royal line, was reincarnated as the northern kingdom’s new emir.
He swapped his pin-striped suit for flowing robes and a turban. Sitting in his throne room the day after his coronation (pictured below), HRH Muhammad Sanusi II told Channel 4 News exactly how he believed the alleged fraud had been perpetrated. He sticks by all his allegations.
“At the heart of the problem, to my mind,” he said, “is that the entire political system is held hostage by a small group of vested interests.”
His was an almost identical assessment to that offered by Stanley in the slum on Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Street, where most people I spoke to knew all about the former central bank governor’s staggering allegations.
But Dr Ngozi herself dismisses his claim. “It just so happens that on this that he was not correct,” she said. Last year, she claimed more than US$10bn was “missing”.
The Nigerian government commissioned an independent “forensic audit” to determine the truth, but has chosen only to publish edited highlights of the final report – and many Nigerians still smell a rat.
Nigeria ranks 136th out of 175 countries surveyed for Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – which measures how corrupt a country’s public sector is perceived to be.
Obiageli Ezekwesili is Transparency’s co-founder. She too has served with the World Bank – as its vice-president for Africa – and as a Nigerian government minister.
“There is nothing cultural about corruption in African societies. What has happened is that the is an alienation of the systems and institutions of governance from the people,” she said.
“So when you see elite greed manifested in grand corruption, perpetrated over time, it is simply that nobody has made the link to the fact that government owes us something.”
Oby Ezekwesili remains optimistic about Nigeria, despite its politicians’ winner-takes-all approach. “Give this country about a decade and a half, it won’t be the same. You know, when citizens awaken to the power of the office of the citizen, no society remains the same.”
Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo has said that reforms by his administration in the digital and technology space over the last eight years have revolutionised the state.
The Governor who stated over the weekend at the launch of the Edo State Digital Policy and Edo Data Centre, disclosed that was the first data centre owned by a state in Nigeria.
According to him, his reforms had repositioned Edo as a leading state in digital inclusion in Nigeria, adding that his government was leveraging technology as a catalyst for socio-economic development and inclusive growth.
He said: “I welcome you to the only data center owned by a state in Nigeria. This event is significant because we have started a revolution in Edo State, a digital revolution. We are rounding up with a policy statement that will guide this revolution into the future.
“The population of Edo is scaled towards the youths as they are born in a digital age. The future is digital. It will be difficult to navigate the world today without technology. If you want to develop and grow rapidly, you must begin to think of how to use technology.
“The pace of the advancement of technology in the world today is scary. So, just imagine those who have not started yet; I don’t think they can live in the future world. In Edo, we have always been ahead in our history. We have been a knowledgeable people as we interacted at a global level over 500 years ago on our own level.
“To catch up, we had to do something else and different. That was why from the beginning it was clear to us that we had to introduce technology and make sure that we begin to retrain our young ones, the youths, to own this digital world and the confidence in it.”
Obaseki added: “We have moved Edo into the digital superhighway and to operate on that superhighway, they must know the rules and must be guided by certain rules and practices. That is what we are doing today and incorporating in this policy document. This will enable everybody to understand the shape of this high way and what they need to do on this high way.”
The governor continued: “I had the privilege of working with young people in Edo State and working together, we set up EdoJobs and the Edo Innovate Hub as these have helped our young people and till date, over 50,000 young men and women have benefited from various training and programmes from Edo Innovate. We have been lucky to build a digital ecosystem which has grown rapidly.
“Years ago, as the Chairman of the State’s Economy Team, we set up the ICTA but we struggled all through but we kept it alive, and set up the law governing it. The agency is principally responsible for providing technology for the government.
Federal Government on Thursday announced a nine-month programme beginning on October 31 that allows individuals to deposit dollar bills held outside the formal banking system without scrutiny.
Wale Edun
It said the new initiative aims to address the rising costs of commodities influenced by the foreign exchange rate, driven by demand and supply dynamics.
Wale Edun, finance minister and coordinating minister of the Economy, revealed this after the 144th meeting of the National Economic Council, the country’s highest economic advisory body, chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima at the State House, Abuja.
“There will be no penalty; there will be no taxes, and there will be no questions,” he told journalists at a briefing after Thursday’s conclave.
Edun said that, under this programme, individuals can bring in U.S. dollars in cash without facing penalties, taxes, or scrutiny, provided that the funds are not linked to criminal or illicit activities.
Participants will only need to meet the standard Know-Your-Customer requirements set by banks to secure these funds, integrate them into the financial system, and make them accessible for legitimate economic activities.
He explained, “One element of the cost increase is the foreign exchange rate, which is demand and supply. There will be a programme starting today, October 31, and lasting nine months that will allow people to bring in cash outside the banking system.
“[Such cash] is unsafe, insecure and outside legal limits. They will be allowed forbearance to bring dollars cash. Let me emphasise once again: it is to bring dollars that they are holding outside the system to get them in and credit it to their bank accounts, as long as it is not proceeds of crime or illicit money.
“They should just meet the standard Know-Your-Customer criteria of banks and have an opportunity to bring in those funds, making them safe, secure, and available through regular economic activity.
Edun said his ministry will first issue guidelines for the programme, followed promptly by additional guidelines from the Central Bank.
According to the Minister, this measure offers law-abiding individuals a way to formalise their cash holdings. It also provides the financial system with additional dollar reserves, which may help to stabilise the exchange rate.
“This is an opportunity, not just for people who would normally like to comply, to be compliant with the laws and normal business practice, but of course, it allows us to bring those dollars from where they are doing nothing to where they are within the financial system, they add to our reserves, and of course can help with the exchange rate,” he added.
Edun equally gave an update on government economic relief measures, saying 25 million Nigerians have benefitted from federal social protection initiatives, including digital outreach, microenterprise loans, and sector-specific support for power, agriculture, manufacturing, health, and compressed natural gas initiatives.
Wema Bank has announced the launch of the Wema Export Trade Academy, a comprehensive training programme designed to equip Nigerian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with the essential skills and tools needed to succeed in the competitive landscape of global trade.
Moruf Oseni, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the bank, this initiative represents Wema Bank’s commitment to enhancing the capacity of Nigerian businesses, supporting their ambitions to thrive on an international scale.
Oseni said the Wema Export Trade Academy is designed as a solution to these challenges faced by Nigerian SMEs when entering international markets.
The Academy is specifically structured to address each critical aspect of global trade, providing SMEs with targeted guidance on compliance, documentation, financial planning, and risk management.
Through the Wema Export Trade Academy, SMEs will benefit from expert-led sessions, mentorship from industry professionals, and practical insights into international business practices, positioning them to make significant contributions within global markets.
The programme also places emphasis on building a network of Nigerian exporters, encouraging peer support and collaboration, while fostering connections between businesses and international trade facilitators.
Oseni said: “This holistic approach to export training will enhance efficiency and productivity, empowering Nigerian businesses to become competitive players in the global economy.
“The Wema Export Trade Academy reinforces Wema Bank’s dedication to building the capacity of Nigerian businesses and supporting their evolution into formidable global competitors.
“By addressing the barriers in export trade, we are enabling Nigerian SMEs to seize new opportunities in international markets, which aligns with our vision to empower lives and support sustainable business growth.
“The Wema Export Trade Academy embodies Wema Bank’s pioneering spirit and commitment to providing SMEs with practical, impactful solutions.
“With comprehensive training on export processes and access to strategic financial products, the program stands as a testament to Wema Bank’s role as an enabler of growth for Nigerian enterprises.
“Wema Bank continues to set the standard for innovation within Nigeria’s financial services industry, supporting individuals and businesses across various sectors to achieve sustainable growth.
“The Wema Export Trade Academy represents the latest stride in Wema Bank’s mission to empower Nigerian SMEs, further strengthening its reputation.”
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