Nigeria is among the richest countries in Africa if not the richest country in Africa, yet the vast majority of her citizens are suffering from poverty, illiteracy, inadequate healthcare, inadequate infrastructural facilities, insecurity etc. Since she gained independence in 1960, a great percentage of persons who have had the opportunity to be in a position of power defrauded her.
So many cases of fraud, embezzlement, and corruption in the Nigerian system just happen to get closed without any form of justice, many of which have gotten away with Nigeria’s money while the people remain in poverty. Different schemes are used by our leaders to get money from the country. Back in 2019, 2020, and 2021, advocating for coronavirus was so high that the people were even scared to live their lives but here comes the election, do you hear anything about coronavirus? Many of these people have even gone out to take pictures and hug the same people they refused to help when they had the opportunity.
In the most recent case of embezzlement in Nigeria, the accountant general of the federation was reported to have allegedly embezzled eighty billion naira in his four-year term of office. Even if a bachelor’s degree holder earns two million naira monthly; it will take forty- two years for the person to make 1 billion, but a single person was able to embezzle a whooping sum of eighty billion naira within the four-year term he was asked to serve Nigeria and yet we ask why we are suffering in Nigeria.
In October 2015, a former minister for petroleum was arrested in the United Kingdom for money laundering, with the help of other accomplices. The CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi the now Emir of kano had detected a form of manipulation in the figures from the oil sector making the sum of twenty billion naira missing. In a recent review of the case, one hundred and fifty million dollars and eighty houses were reportedly recovered from the ex-minister. More and more discoveries are made in this case which is still ongoing.
The late general Sanni Abacha ruled Nigeria between the years 1993- 1998 yet in the year 2022, 24 years later millions of dollars of money looted by the late general are still being recovered(source: BBC News, Google).
The current state of Nigeria is bizarre; the people elected to serve are the ones draining the country. Nigeria is faced with so many problems yet all our leaders can do is create even bigger problems rather than create solutions and make things better. The Academic staff union of universities (ASUU) has been on strike since February 2022 and marked its 100th day on strike on May 25, 2022. The body which is supposed to be responsible for the creation of future leaders is yet to be adequately funded but an individual is able to defraud the country of 80 billion naira. The system is rotten. Insecurity is on another level, the lives of Nigerians are at stake. The Nigerian economy is on the edge, the rate of inflation rising every day, a loss of value for naira.
Written by: Aderonke Ojedokun
