The Rivers State Government has refuted the response of Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Honourable Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on the recent claim by Governor of Rivers State and Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi that $5bn is missing from the Excess Crude Account (ECA).
Amaechi made the claim while speaking at the second retreat of the NGF in Sokoto State, after which the minister responded with a rebuttal that described the governor’s claim as shocking and false.
“The $5bn which Governor Amaechi referred to in his statement has been shared to the three tiers of government to make up for the revenue shortfalls during the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee process”, Okonjo-Iweala had said, adding that “part of this fund also went for SURE-P payments and the balance for subsidy payments to oil marketers”.
But on Sunday, the Rivers Sate Government addressed the issues raised by the minister, disproving her response and asking for further clarifications.
“First, the Rivers State Government wishes to acknowledge, as highlighted by Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, that it received the sum of N56.2bn, for January to September 2013 as statutory allocation from the federation account”, Rivers State Commissioner of Information and Communications, Ibim Semenitari wrote in a statement.
“The federation account is funded from receipts from oil and other sales (with oil accounting for over 90 per cent and taxes - VAT- custom duties etc.). When more crude is produced and sold above the quantity anticipated by the budget for any given year, the funds are by law meant to be kept as future savings in a stabilization account, also known as the excess crude account.
“Contrary to the coordinating minister’s claim, that ‘Mr. Amaechi was closely involved and actively participated in making requests to the Presidency for the account to be shared for the purpose of augmenting the regular allocations from the Federation Account whenever there was a shortfall’, Governor Chibuike Amaechi and his colleague governors have only attended only one meeting where ONE REQUEST was made for the sharing of $1bn from the Excess Crude Account. Beyond that one meeting, there has been no other meeting where it was decided that money from the ECA be shared among the three tiers of government.
“There is a position of the National Executive Council’s (NEC) on the matter of the Excess Crude Account. This position is that the savings in the ECA belonging to all the states is not to be touched. Indeed, this is in tandem with the position of the honourable minister that the ECA is savings for all to be set aside for the rainy day and not to be ‘shared’ in the manner she now seems to suggest. The Rivers State Government finds it curious and very disturbing that our rainy day savings has been ‘shared’ in complete breach of the known procedure for doing such and in what might be considered an under the table and clandestine manner”.
Semenitari argued that the appropriate procedure, as the honourable minster knows, is that usually, members of the NEC have to make recommendations to the president should there be need recourse to the Excess Crude account. The Rivers State Government expressed certainty that its chief executive and governor did not participate in any such meeting where any such approval was requested or even discussed and given.
Continuing, Semenitari wrote: “The second issue is the pertinent matter of the receipts accruing to the Rivers State Government. Since it is not procedural for states to receive allocation from the Excess Crude Account, it may smirk of mischief to suggest as the Honourable Minister did that Governor Amaechi refused to acknowledge, ‘Rivers State has received N56.2bn from the Excess Crude Account between January and September 2013’. Neither Rivers nor any other state would have any inkling that the money received by Rivers State government and other state governments for that matter was funded from the ECA.
“According to a communiqué issued by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation after the June allocation meeting, ‘the sum of N7.617bn refunded by NNPC and the N35.547bn from the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P); formed part of the total distributable revenue for the month.’ The communiqué confirmed that the gross revenue for the month was N863.026bn. This was higher than the N590.777bn received in May by N272.249bn. It said very unambiguously, ‘the higher revenue was a result of increased crude oil production due to the completion of pipeline repairs in some terminals. There was also a significant increase in non-oil revenue during the period due to the receipt of accumulated arrears on companies’.
“The Rivers State government therefore finds puzzling the suggestion by the honourable minister that the savings for 2012 has been used to fund the budget for 2013. For the purposes of clarity and for avoidance of doubt, the Rivers State Government may respectfully request the honourable minister to shed more light on the following,
How much oil does the country produce per day?
Clarification that the benchmark price for oil in the 2013 budget is $79?
Is it a fact that crude oil was sold at prices that hovered around $110 per day throughout the year?
How much exactly has Nigeria earned from its oil sales in 2013 and what percentage of the budget is funded by these receipts?
“The position of the Federal Government has been that there are shortfalls in production but does this position also take into cognisance the over $30 differential between the benchmark price of $79 and the actual sale price which averaged $110 per barrel during the period. The position of the Rivers State Government is that the differential of over $30 should have been enough to fund the shortfall in production? Unfortunately there has been no accounting for this huge differential. Perhaps the Honourable minister may assist us in putting this in better perspective.
“Governor Amaechi’s position in Sokoto was that the ECA is being managed like a piggy-bankcontrary to provisions of the law and in a manner that does not allow for transparency and accountability. A position which the Honourable Minister’s rebuttal now seems to confirm, as can be noted in the third issue she raised in her response.
“According to her, the SURE-P is being funded from the ECA. But the President in his broadcasthad stated that SURE-P ‘is designed to manage and reinvest the Federal Governments share of the savings from the partial reduction of subsidies on petroleum products’. It was not and is not meant to be that SURE-P is to be funded from ECA nor can the Federal Government unilaterally withdraw money from the ECA to balance payments to oil marketers. Indeed the statement of the accountant general of the federation previously quoted lays credence to this position – ‘N35.547bn from the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P); formed part of the total distributable revenue for the month’”.
According to other sections of the statement, it has been the understanding of the Rivers State Government that SURE-P is funded from the extra money realised from the pump price of petroleum, which Nigerians protested against when the pump price of fuel was raised.
It queried the honorable minister telling Nigerians that the SURE-P is now being funded from the ECA and wondered if it might be true as was recently suggested in the National Assembly that over N500billion of SURE-P money may be missing
“The Government of Rivers State holds the office and person of the honourable minister in high esteem, but as a government we owe the 5.6million Rivers people whose mandate we hold a responsibility of accountability.
“The issues raised by Governor Amaech were raised purely out of concern for the need for accountability and safeguarding the wealth of “future generations of Rivers people.” It is for this purpose and to this end that we most respectfully seek clarification of the following.
How much oil does Nigeria produce?
Where is the differential between the oil pump prices?
What price is our oil being sold for?
How much have we earned from our crude oil sales in the last year?
What percentage of budget 2013 does our crude oil sales revenue fund?
Can the Honourable Minister assist in shedding more light on the subsidy savings since the reduction in petroleum subsidy?
“As a government that is also a major stakeholder in the administration, we believe that answers to these very pertinent questions would put paid to whatever false or misleading information may have been put out or peddled in the public domain.”
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Gunmen believed to be kidnappers attacked a commercial vehicle belonging to Benue Links, the state-owned transport company.
About 17 candidates travelling to Otukpo for their examination centres in the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) are feared to have been abducted, although the exact number of victims remains unclear.
Information available to our correspondent says that the incident took place between 7–8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 15, along the Benue Burnt Bricks in Otukpo, Otukpo Local Government Area (LGA) of Benue State.
According to sources, the assailants waylaid the bus and robbed the occupants of their belongings before whisking them away into the bush.
An eyewitness, who spoke to journalists on the condition of anonymity, said the Benue Links bus, which was conveying about 18 passengers, ran into the kidnappers at about 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday night.
“The passengers were mainly young persons heading to Otukpo to sit for the JAMB examination scheduled for Thursday.
“Two people, the driver and one passenger, managed to escape. Incidentally, the passengers were mainly young men and women who travelled to sit for the JAMB examination scheduled for today (Thursday),” he said.
When contacted, the General Manager of Benue Links, Mr Alexander Fanafa, confirmed the incident, noting that the driver of the bus is presently undergoing interrogation at the police station in Otukpo for violating the company’s safety policy not to travel beyond 6:00 p.m.
He said, “As I speak with you, the driver has been arrested and is under investigation for traveling against company directive. I have warned all drivers to stop night journeys, as they would be held as first suspects if anything unfortunate happens.”
The General Manager further stated that the driver took his vehicle and loaded the passengers who were heading to Otukpo after official hours when the park manager, Mr Amedu, had closed, and ran into trouble, so he has been arrested.
The Executive Chairman of Otukpo Local Government Council, Prince Maxwell Ogiri, confirmed the incident, saying that it occurred between 7 and 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
He added that security agents have been mobilized to rescue the victims, stating that the victims are all young people coming to Otukpo to write JAMB examinations.
“It is true, I’m just coming out from a security meeting, and security operatives have been moved into the forest to help rescue the kidnapped victims.
“The victims are mainly young boys and girls coming to Otukpo to write JAMB,” Ogiri said.
However, when contacted, the Benue State Commissioner of Police, Ifeanyi Emenari, confirmed the situation, but said 14 passengers were kidnapped, while one passenger escaped.
The commissioner disclosed that he had already arrived in Otukpo and is conducting the rescue operation.
“I am in Otukpo now with all my team and DPOs who are here in the bush, and I am heading the operation.
“What happened was that one Benue Links bus carrying passengers coming to Otukpo was stopped and attacked by hoodlums, and 14 passengers were kidnapped, but one was able to escape,” he said.
According to him, the command had commenced an investigation into the incident, particularly the circumstances surrounding the journey.
He maintained that Benue Links management has a policy against night travel, but the driver allegedly picked up passengers after official hours.
“We know that Benue Links has a policy and don’t usually drive at night. So from what I got, they have already closed, but the driver, for reasons best known to him which we are still trying to find out, picked passengers along the road, and when he came here, the story you have is what we are having.
“But as we are investigating, we are on the ground to make sure that the victims are rescued,” Emenari said.
News
There are governments that save for the rainy day, governments that prepare for the storm, and governments that, when the heavens open and money falls like tropical rain, rush outside with buckets full of holes. Nigeria, under President Bola Tinubu, has perfected a fourth category: the government that borrows during a windfall. It is a feat of fiscal acrobatics so astonishing that even the most cynical observers of Abuja’s budgetary theatre must pause in admiration. For decades, Nigeria has squandered oil booms with the reliability of a metronome. But this administration has achieved something more ambitious: it has managed to squander a boom before it even finishes arriving.
The US–Iran war has sent oil prices soaring to $115 per barA Government Addicted to Debtrel, nearly double the government’s benchmark of $64.85. Nigeria is earning an extra $92 million every single day; a torrent of unbudgeted cash that would make even the most jaded petro state accountant blush. In barely a month, Abuja has pocketed almost $3 billion in windfall revenue. If the conflict drags on, the country could rake in $30–$36 billion this year alone. And what has the Tinubu administration done with this unexpected bounty? Why, it has gone on a borrowing binge, of course.
In the past week alone, the National Assembly approved: a $5 billion loan from First Abu Dhabi Bank; a $1 billion UKEF backed loan for Lagos ports; a $6 billion external borrowing package, rubber stamped in under four hours, and a N68.323 trillion budget; the largest in Nigeria’s history. This is not fiscal policy. This is a national credit card with no spending limit. Nigeria’s public debt now hovers around $115 billion, and debt servicing will gulp N20.5 trillion in 2026; more than the budgets of health, education, and infrastructure combined. Yet the government borrows as though it were a teenager discovering online shopping for the first time. One might have expected that a historic oil windfall would inspire restraint. Instead, Abuja behaves like a gambler who wins the lottery and immediately takes out a loan to buy more lottery tickets.
The Senate: From Upper Chamber to Upper Cashier
The Senate’s role in this farce deserves special mention. Once conceived as a check on executive excess, it now functions as a conveyor belt for presidential loan requests. The $6 billion borrowing package was approved with the speed of a fast food order; no debate, no scrutiny, no hesitation. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, hardly a stranger to Nigeria’s fiscal melodramas, described the approval as “reckless urgency.” He is being polite. The Senate has not merely abdicated oversight; it has embraced its new role as a ceremonial stamp of approval, a kind of legislative rubber chicken waved over every loan document. One wonders whether senators even bother to read the fine print anymore, or whether they simply check the exchange rate, sigh, and sign.
The Oil Windfall That Will Not Be Saved
Other countries treat oil windfalls as blessings. Norway built a sovereign wealth fund so large it could buy entire countries. Saudi Arabia uses its surpluses to diversify its economy. Even Angola; long mocked for its corruption, has learned to stash away a portion of its oil riches. Nigeria, by contrast, treats windfalls as invitations to spend more, borrow more, and plan less. The Excess Crude Account, once envisioned as a rainy day fund, is now emptier than a politician’s promise after election day. The Sovereign Wealth Fund is a polite fiction. And fiscal discipline is a rumor whispered in the corridors of the Ministry of Finance. The tragedy is not that Nigeria is poor. The tragedy is that Nigeria is mismanaged.
The revised N68.323 trillion budget is a monument to fiscal optimism. It allocates N15.8 trillion to debt servicing; N15.4 trillion to recurrent expenditure, and N32.2 trillion to capital projects, many of them rolled over from previous years because the government failed to implement them. This is not a budget. It is a wish list. The government insists that the spending spree will “stimulate growth,” “unlock infrastructure,” and “stabilize the economy.” These are the same phrases Nigerian governments have used since the 1970s, usually moments before the economy collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.
Borrowing to Service Borrowing
The most farcical element of the Tinubu administration’s fiscal strategy is its reliance on borrowing to service existing borrowing. Nigeria now borrows to pay interest on previous loans, borrows to refinance old debts, borrows to fund recurrent expenditure, and borrows to cover budget gaps. This is not fiscal management. It is a Ponzi scheme with national colors. The administration insists that the debt is “sustainable.” So did Greece in 2008. So did Argentina in 2001. So did Nigeria in the 1980s; right before the IMF arrived with structural adjustment programs (SAP) that Nigerians still curse today.
Nigeria’s economy is a house built on sand: the naira remains fragile, inflation is suffocating households, foreign investors are fleeing, debt service consumes most of national revenue, oil production is unstable and non oil revenue is anemic. And yet, in the middle of this storm, the government has chosen to borrow more; at a moment when it should be saving aggressively. The oil windfall is a gift. But gifts require stewardship. And stewardship requires discipline. Neither is in abundant supply in Abuja.
Conclusion: A Nation at the Edge of a Fiscal Cliff
The expanded budget includes lavish allocations to the judiciary ahead of the 2027 elections, feasibility studies for politically convenient infrastructure, and capital projects that conveniently align with electoral maps. This is not economic planning. It is election year choreography. Nigeria is not being prepared for the future. It is being prepared for the polls.
The Tinubu administration inherited a difficult economy. But it has chosen to make it worse. Instead of using the oil windfall to rebuild reserves, strengthen the currency, reduce borrowing, and stabilize the economy, it has embarked on a reckless spending spree financed by loans that future generations will be forced to repay. Nigeria is earning billions, and saving nothing. And it is borrowing everything. History will not be kind to this moment. Nor will the bond markets. In the end, Nigeria’s tragedy is not that it lacks resources. It is that it lacks restraint. And in Abuja today, restraint is as scarce as electricity.
Business
In The Spotlight
On Friday, Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters confirmed the death of the Commander of the 29 Task Force Brigade in Benisheikh, Borno State, Brigadier General Oseni Braimah, and three other soldiers, following a ruthless attack on the military formation. Though this confirmation calmed initial reports that more than 17 soldiers were killed in the April 9, 2026 attack, it, however, ignited a deeper cause for concern among Nigerians, considering the fact that just about five months earlier, another brigadier general, Musa Uba, was murdered in cruel but avoidable circumstances near Wajiroko, in the same Borno State.
The attack on the military formation was not the only terrorist strike that week. That same Thursday, the devastating news of the soldiers who paid the supreme price had not been fully digested when another report filtered in, at night, that no fewer than eight persons had been killed by gunmen, in Mbwelle village, Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State. This was besides the bloodshed recorded in Shanga Local Government Area of Kebbi State on Easter Sunday, where 24 people were killed, according to the Kontagora Catholic Diocese, and in Kebbi and Kwara states, where 49 villagers were reportedly killed on Friday.
Despite the confusion, mourning and grief that followed the killing of these helpless civilians in various communities, described by authorities as some of the deadliest incidents recorded in recent months, the report of the military formation invasion and the killing of soldiers specifically caused panic attacks among citizens and gave a “hopeless situation” slant to the worsening security crisis. And this has become a trend since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency in 2009.
It is true that Nigeria’s security forces under the current administration have been dismantling bandit networks and killing scores of terrorists. But the relentless attacks on innocent citizens, which have led to the death of over 10,000 people in two years, and the kidnapping of more than 1,100 people in northern Nigeria, in just four months, appear to have enveloped security agencies’ efforts and boxed the current All Progressives Congress administration into a more precarious corner than previous opposition governments.
A few analysts have tried to compare the security situation under the late former President Muhammadu Buhari with the situation now. While some scored the President Bola Tinubu administration above his predecessor’s, others like Olu Fasan, in his article: “Recurring bloodbath: Nigeria is too fragile, too fractured to be safe”, said, “It has taken Tinubu less than three years in office to achieve a worse security situation than Buhari did in (his) eight years in power.”
I may not directly agree with this notion, but I know that the prevailing economic hardship or widespread poverty in the country, despite significant, growth-targeted policy reforms like exchange rate unification, subsidy removal, and fiscal coordination, can be justifiably linked to rising insecurity.
The Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, in a 2024 study brief, titled: “Insecurity takes the lead as the key driver of poverty in Nigeria”, said, “Once a country experiences conflict and insecurity, it faces a reversal of economic development, which in turn increases the likelihood of further conflict, resulting in a cycle economists refer to as doom-loop. By undermining household livelihood activities on massive scales in Nigeria, increasing insecurity in the last five years has not only intensified poverty in the country, but has also opened up new frontiers of multidimensional poverty across Nigeria.”
Insecurity, according to NISER, drives poverty by disrupting and destroying livelihood activities and by reducing access to basic needs, thereby stifling meaningful improvement in the quality of life in Nigeria. This argument can be better appreciated if one considers how many Nigerians have abandoned leisure or commercial farming, especially in rural areas, owing to rising insecurity.
It would be unfair to pin the blame for this lingering crisis on the current administration; past governments were not also able to do much to stem the tide. But the fact that political IOUs seemed to have trumped competence during the initial formation of President Tinubu’s cabinet inadvertently gave room for unpalatable political treatment of delicate security matters across the states.
The Ministry of Defence, according to analysts, was the worst hit until recently, as analysts found it difficult to decode the consideration behind the choice of the two ministers who were initially saddled with such a priority responsibility. Perhaps, if the issue of security had been given the kind of attention it is being given now, from the beginning of the current administration, the terrorists might not have been this emboldened amid international focus.
The result is that, unlike when Nigeria was ranked the Number One Destination for Investment in Africa for two consecutive years (2012 and 2013), other African countries have, since then, continued to displace the nation, owing to a combination of factors, including accessibility and innovation, economic stability and investment climate, among others.
Of the 31 countries that were tracked in the 2024 edition of the “Where to Invest in Africa” report, published by Rand Merchant Bank and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, Nigeria was ranked as the ninth most viable destination for investment in Africa, behind South Africa, in fourth position; and Ghana, sixth. The 2025 report sadly reflected a further decline for Nigeria, by nine places, to the 18th position.
It doesn’t take an economist to understand that banditry, kidnapping, killings, among other forms of security crisis being witnessed on a large scale in Nigeria, can seriously damage the investment climate and trigger capital flight. Any government that picks the socio-economic well-being of its citizens as Number One on its priority chart must, therefore, go all out to first ensure the security of lives and property, against all odds.
That the Federal Government has published a list of 48 individuals linked to terrorism financing is a step in the right direction. That it has also secured 386 convictions, out of 508 cases in a mass terrorists’ trial, is another feat that can deter others and stem the tide, but politicians must, in the interest of the masses and the well-being of the nation, stop playing politics with this sensitive issue of insecurity.
Rather than mock or blame the APC administration for the current predicament, opposition figures and Nigerians as a whole must converge on the need to be united against this monster. However, the Tinubu administration must also avoid actions or statements that could trigger a revolt at this period. With the economic challenges from almost every angle, Nigerians seem to be constantly on edge.
In March 2014, the APC, then the main opposition party, lambasted the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration for trying to cover up its “incompetence and cluelessness” in tackling the Boko Haram insurgency.
The APC, in a statement signed by Lai Mohammed, its interim National Publicity Secretary at the time, said, “A country that has no discernible counter-terrorism strategy that will clearly identify the multiple means for preventing, responding and defeating terrorist groups, including the alignment of political, military, social and economic instruments and objectives, cannot expect to successfully battle any insurgency.”
Now that the APC is the ruling party, and Nigeria is still not out of the woods, should citizens still agree with the party’s assertion? How the authorities handle the situation will determine the answer. What goes around comes around!
In The Spotlight
Nearly 40 years ago in London, I was invited to dinner by a Nigerian woman I knew in Lagos.
She had described the place in general terms, but I arrived at an upscale home with some serious luxury. She was kind enough to show me around, and following a stylish dinner, she described how she had acquired the place, mentioning headline Nigerian names.
I had no reason to doubt her: some of them called during the evening. I declined her offer to share her conversations with them.
It was my personal introduction to the scale of Nigerian property in the English capital, as she described who owned what or lived where.
While my visits to England at the time were work-related and I had little time to socialise, I did meet several teenage Nigerian students whose parents were glad to send them abroad for education.
They patrolled the streets of London in exotic cars, and I thought it was ironic that, in isolation away from Nigeria, the young ladies were often being manipulated by their fathers’ friends.
In the decades that followed, I read stories of politically exposed Nigerians, particularly state governors, for whom the UK was the first address in money laundering.
On a few occasions, I have alluded to that phenomenon in this column. They acquired expensive homes, cars and even gold phones. One, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, fled London disguised as a woman. Another, James Ibori, was tried and jailed.
Keep in mind that there have been about 185 governors since May 1999, and that London is nearly always their first port of call.
It is humbling to reflect on what percentage of this number has, in the past 26 years, sunk Nigerian wealth into the soil of England, with considerable swathes lost to middlemen and smooth women.
Remember: in 2006, the then-Minister of State for Finance, Nenadi Usman, criticised governors, saying that they disappeared abroad just days after receiving state allocations and after visiting Bureau De Change operators.
In 2007, a famous Human Rights Watch report, “Chop Fine,” described the case of Rivers State in grim detail.
The problem is that it is not always governors, as demonstrated by the story, “Abuja on Thames,” which appeared in the British monthly, Private Eye, in March 2019. That month, I commented on that story, which involved the astonishing wealth in that country of Paul Ogwuma, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The full Nigerian picture of capital flight, elite consumption, and political patronage was on display when the Panama Papers in 2016 and the Pandora Papers in 2021, two massive international media investigations in which our Premium Times participated, uncovered how the world’s rich and powerful deploy offshore mechanisms to hide their possessions.
As always happens, no Nigerian lost a kobo, let alone a heartbeat, as a result of those investigations, because in Nigeria, crime and hypocrisy quite literally pay.
And then in 2024, a list appeared of 58 deceased Nigerians with unclaimed assets in the UK, as part of a daily-updated “Bona Vacantia” (BV) list, meaning that having remained unclaimed, they are now considered the property of the Crown.
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The Nigerian government does not inform Nigerians about the BV list or the claims process, so those properties are probably lost forever.
Remember also, the case of Nigerian “government” property on the verge of forfeiture in the UK a few years ago. In New York and Maryland, in the US, Nigerian governors and diplomats have left behind a long trail of property issues. In 2012, Alamieyeseigha forfeited $401,931 in traceable assets to the US government when President Jonathan’s government failed to claim them.
And so, the rich continue to flourish, and in January 2026, Tax Policy Associates of the UK published the extensive investigation, ‘Who secretly owns Britain? The hidden offshore owners of £460bn of UK property.’
A report in The Londoner, based on that investigation, peeled back the layers to link the late Herbert Wigwe, the former chief executive of Access Holdings, to about 106 properties. That placed him at No. 7 on a list of “The overseas power players in London’s property market,” with each property registered under shell companies outside the country, leaving none of them directly traceable to him.
While some of these practices are legal, especially on the part of private businessmen, the problem is that Nigeria has, for decades, been burdened by an army of much smaller ants eating away at her. Most of them are pillars of society, either claiming sainthood or praying for it, while the people from whom they amassed their wealth starve to death.
But there is another side: in Nigeria, the Tax Policy Associates investigation, like the arrests of Dariye and Alamieyeseigha and the trial of Ibori, would have been impossible.
“Abuja on Thames” would never have been investigated or published. Not the Pandora Papers. Not the Panama Papers.
Because we are traders. We are either buying or selling. When the aroma of money or power is present, some would sell their very souls. It is why we are where we are.
The system, of course, is in many ways pre-rigged. On real estate matters, we operate a fragmented administrative system with multiple overlapping authorities, incomplete digitisation, and overwhelming opacity. The FCT and state capitals are stories of greed.
This is because the Land Use Act vests all land in each state in the governor (and the President for the FCT). This means that, technically, no one “owns” land outright; one only holds a Certificate of Occupancy. That creates enormous scope for discretionary allocation and corruption, since governors and the FCT minister can grant or revoke rights, and often do.
This is why an FCT minister is a king. He can allocate land to whomever he pleases:
Relatives of the First Lady were thrice removed.
His wife.
Fourth cousins.
Underage children.
Governors, again.
EFCC officials.
ICPC officials.
Code of Conduct Bureau officials.
Girlfriends and their friends.
Supreme Court judges.
Court of Appeal judges.
INEC officials.
Senators.
Top police officers.
Among others, remember the FCT land scam of 2004; the Ministerial allegations involving the current FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike; and the 57 multi-billion-naira properties linked to former Attorney-General Abubakar Malami.
Just imagine what a Tax Policy Associates-style investigation of real estate ownership in Nigeria’s big cities would reveal.
Because in Nigeria, power is deployed into service only when we pray in the mosque or the church. Outside that, power is for the self.
And if you can export that power abroad in funds that belong to the commonwealth, to deprive other Nigerians of it and make you live like a king forever, so much the better!
Sonala Olumhense