ABSTRACT
A while ago, I engaged in discussions with my students about corruption in Nigeria. These were undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Economics; the average age of the class was 28 years. When asked about their perception of the Nigerian society in one word, “corrupt” was the most common word in their responses. The most common comment about leadership in Nigeria was that it was corrupt. According to them, corruption has resulted in huge income disparities, rising unemployment and poverty. From their submissions, it emerged that the sector worst hit by corruption is the oil sector, the live wire of the country’s economy. There have been recurring controversies surrounding huge amounts of revenue lost in transactions within the sector. Joe Brock and Tim Cocks recall the audits carried out by the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) covering the period between 2006 and 2008. They reported that $540 million was lost from $1.675 billion in signature bonuses, and 3.1 million barrels of crude oil were unaccounted for based on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) declarations about its joint venture compared with NNPCs international partners. 1 This represented about 0.25% of total output in the period. NEITI also reported that NNPC received $3.789 billion in dividends from Nigerian LNG over the 2006–2008 periods, and there were no records of these monies paid into the federal government accounts. Brock and Cocks conclude that getting a clear picture of how much Nigeria has lost to corruption over the years, not just from the oil sector but all around, is impossible.
