Gina Yashere once cracked a joke that should have come with a constitutional amendment: “If you kill someone in Nigeria, you will get away with it.” She followed up with the immortal line that “CSI in Nigeria means Can’t Solve It.” This was comedy, of course—except Nigeria heard it and said, write that down, write that down.
Take the recent embarrassment involving a very senior Nigerian lawyer, a SAN no less, Chief Mike Ozekhome. In a UK tribunal—yes, not Nollywood, not Africa Magic, but a real court with wigs that cost more than Nigerian budgets—identity documents presented in a property dispute over the estate of the late Lt. General Jeremiah Useni were adjudged to be forged. Forged. Not “unclear,” not “subject to further verification,” but the legal equivalent of oga, this thing fake.
Back home, the Nigerian Bar Association announced it would investigate. Government departments that allegedly issued the documents also promised investigations. Nigeria loves investigations the way children love ice cream—enthusiastically at first, then forgotten once the sun comes out. And true to form, that was the last anyone heard of it. Chief Ozekhome, once a permanent fixture on Nigerian television studios—appearing more often than adverts for herbal cures—has since gone missing from the airwaves. Investigations, like generator fuel, appear to have finished.
Then there was Niger State, where bandits abducted schoolchildren for ransom. We were told soldiers had been deployed to protect the school, only to be withdrawn 45 minutes before the bandits arrived. Forty-five minutes. That is not coincidence; that is scheduling. The obvious question—who ordered the withdrawal?—has been floating in the Nigerian air like PHCN promises. Months later, no answer. The military has a unitary command structure, meaning someone somewhere gave an order. But in Nigeria, orders evaporate faster than budgetary allocations.
In Yes Minister, that brilliant British documentary disguised as comedy, a character quipped that not finding answers to questions was the whole purpose of a commission of inquiry. Nigeria watched that episode and said, hold my palm wine. Here, an investigation is not meant to discover facts; it is meant to bury them with full honours.
Consider the legendary NNPC mystery where $2.8 billion allegedly went missing. An inquiry later clarified that the money was not lost—it merely went on holiday. It was paid into a private account for six months and later returned to government coffers. Case closed. The only small, insignificant question—whose private account was it?—was treated as rude, intrusive, and unpatriotic. Nigerians were expected to be grateful that the money came back at all, like a runaway goat returning home after Christmas.
We have also had a list of terror financiers “ready” for years. Always ready, never released. Like Nigeria’s refineries. Or uninterrupted power supply. Names exist, we are told. Just not for public consumption. Apparently, knowing who funds terror might cause terror.
Nigeria may be the only country on earth where paper trails are considered mythical creatures. Government expenditures leave no footprints. Businesses have no profit-and-loss accounts, so profits cannot be taxed—because you cannot tax what does not officially exist. Contracts are awarded without paperwork, so when disputes arise, there is nothing to enforce. Police and government agency assets simply develop legs and walk away, leaving no documents behind. Even land—land that cannot physically move—somehow disappears on paper.
Birth and death records are optional hobbies. As a result, the age of the president is a philosophical question, and schools he claims to have attended respond like witnesses in a mafia movie: we don’t know him.
Huge sums of public money are spent in cash, because nothing says accountability like Ghana-Must-Go bags. Intercity buses don’t know how many passengers they carry, because Nigerians believe counting is a colonial concept. You board in Ibadan, pick someone up in Iwo Road, another in Osogbo, and by Akure the bus has achieved population growth.
The list goes on. And on. And on—like Nigerian investigations.
So when Gina Yashere joked about CSI Nigeria, she wasn’t joking. She was prophesying. In Nigeria, crimes don’t need solving, questions don’t need answers, and investigations don’t need conclusions. All they need is time—enough time for Nigerians to move on to the next scandal.
After all, in CSI Nigeria, the most important rule remains sacred: nothing must be solved, because solving things sets a dangerous precedent.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 