Corruption
When I meet new people in Nigeria one of the fist questions I try to ask them is if they could change one thing about the country what would it be. The answer is always resoundingly the same thing: fix the corruption.
Over the years billions of dollars has been transferred to Nigeria through loans from the IMF and the World Bank. These loans are meant to be for the common citizen but in talking with them they see none of the money. Instead what the common citizens see is a few people at the top who put billions of dollars into their own pockets and become untouchable here since they have so much cash.
The last three heads of police are all being investigated for corruption. It is pretty hard for the government to charge them with anything since the head of police was hired to fix the elections so people could get in power. How can you bite the hand that knows all of your secrets!
The great story I heard was of ballot boxes being stolen in elections and then allowed to be submitted and counted a couple hours later. What exactly do the election officials think one does with a stolen ballot box??? Check out this story to see what Amnesty International thinks about the situation:
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/regions/africa/nigeria
Or another story has the government giving favorable contracts and then getting kick backs off shore so that it can’t be traced here in Nigeria. And you wonder why Nigeria gets such a bad reputation in the world. This is the link to the most recent bribe case:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/business/04bribe.html?_r=1&ref=africa
The big problem for the average Nigerian is that this corruption is keeping them in the poverty trap. They can’t get enough assets put together to start saving and improving their education. At least if the government was truly trying to help the people and not themselves the citizens here would have a better chance of moving towards prosperity.
