Tag: corruption institution

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Silence is Golden (Especially When It’s About Your Land) by Lawson Akhigbe

In most functional societies, those quaint places where governments occasionally remember they exist to serve rather than to frustrate, when a citizen submits an application requiring official action, a few basic courtesies are observed. An acknowledgment. A request for missing documents if needed. Perhaps even a timeline, however optimistic. The machinery of state, however rusty, at least coughs to confirm it has received your papers.

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Trump’s con-artist history by Lawson Akhigbe

Trump’s business career has long been characterized as embodying “con-artist” tactics: aggressive promotion, leveraging his personal brand for high-margin or low-substance ventures, heavy debt leverage, selective truth-stretching in marketing, and frequent legal disputes.

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Black Holes in the Public Purse by Lawson Akhigbe

This is not an isolated comedy of errors. It is a textbook illustration of the black holes deliberately engineered into Nigeria’s public finance architecture opaque pockets that swallow money, evade legislative eyes, and render executives unaccountable. The Bodija tranche is merely one shiny pebble in a vast, dark galaxy of special interventions, contingency advances, service-wide votes, ecological funds, security “emergency” deductions, and other discretionary vehicles that allow the executive to move (or park) billions with minimal sunlight.

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Wike’s political patronage history by Lawson Akhigbe

Nyesom Ezenwo Wike (born 1967), a Nigerian lawyer and politician from the Ikwerre ethnic group in Rivers State, exemplifies the dynamics of political patronage, godfatherism, loyalty, and power consolidation in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. His career trajectory, from local government chairman to state governor and federal minister, highlights how personal networks, resource control (especially oil-derived revenues), strategic alliances, and public confrontations shape Nigerian politics.

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Ponzi Loans and Politicians by Lawson Akhigbe

AMCON has repeatedly noted that a small number of high-profile obligors (often 300–400 individuals/entities) account for 70–80% of its outstanding portfolio (peaking around ₦4.5–5 trillion in various reports). Many of these involve politicians or their allied companies, where debts originated from pre-AMCON bank loans (e.g., Union Bank, Skye Bank facilities) that turned non-performing due to factors like margin lending, poor governance, or economic shocks.

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