Lots of Nigerians are compelled to accept corruption as the commonest feature of life in the country. If you ask me, I’ll tell you that they are right, especially, in view of the stories that made headlines in the past weeks and months.
Take a look at the case involving a permanent secretary in a federal ministry who was caught with a staggering amount of over N2 billion cash in his possession. The permanent secretary and other senior officials were members of a syndicate that had been stealing pension funds of over N3 billion every month. This criminal group of senior civil servants reportedly collected pensions of more than 70,000 non-existing retired workers.
It is indeed disturbing that while N28 billion that belonged to the police pension fund was found to be lodged in an unidentified account, more than 44,000 workers who retired between 1968 and 1975 were found to have been denied their pension benefits.One of the members of this corrupt syndicate was reported to own about 550 accounts in one bank. That raises a fundamental question whether Nigerian banks are complicit in cases of corruption. Again, if you ask me, I’d say they seem to be.
Don't blame me for thinking that way: How could one person operate such a large number of accounts without raising the suspicion of the bank’s senior management? I smell a rat here. What about you?
Is not laughable that Nigeria, a country blemished by corruption should received a grant of 98 million euros from European Union to aid it fight corruption and to strengthen its campaign against drug trafficking? Well, somebody says that the grant’ resembles a Greek gift. It is like offering a dog a piece of bone to help the dog to fight its addiction to bones’ In a country where corruption has become an approved way of life, the grant from the European Union may well be embezzled by a group of tough-talkingofficials.
Corruption in Nigeria is like a genetic disease. Most public officers are consistently devising and activating schemes to steal.
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