The time has come to end the culture of impunity that allows Nigeria’s public officials to steal in plain sight — and walk away celebrated. There is a word for what they do. Not a euphemism. Not a diplomatic abstraction buried in a parliamentary committee report. The word is bribery. And in Nigeria, it is not a scandal. It is a system.
More than 88 percent of Nigerians say it is unacceptable for a public official to demand or accept a bribe. They know it is wrong. They say so, consistently, in survey after survey. And yet corruption persists — embedded, normalized, self-perpetuating — because those in power have decided that the rules simply do not apply to them.
I am done with polite language. The moment has arrived to name what is happening and to name, where the record permits, who is doing it.
THE UNIVERSITY SHAKEDOWN
In January 2025, investigators at Premium Times exposed one of the most brazen extortion schemes in recent Nigerian legislative history. Senators and members of the House of Representatives, operating through the Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund and the House Committee on University Education, demanded money from universities to approve their budgets. Using an elaborate system created by the lawmakers, 60 federal university vice-chancellors were required to pay ₦8 million each — ₦4 million to the Senate committee and ₦4 million to the House committee. The lawmakers expected to collect ₦480 million in total, and they assigned two vice-chancellors from the North Central and North West zones to coordinate the payments to avoid detection.
The scheme was not subtle. Vice-chancellors who refused to comply were threatened with probes or the non-passage of their institutions’ budgets. The more they complained, the more aggressive the lawmakers became.
The extortion scheme was set in motion on 16 January by the House Committee on University Education, chaired by Hassan Fulata of the APC in Jigawa State.
What happened next was equally instructive. Senators confirmed to Premium Times that they had received $1,000 each as “appreciation money” but claimed they were unaware of its source until the investigation was published. That is the Nigerian legislative alibi: I took the money. I just didn’t ask where it came from.
The House of Representatives issued a denial. Its spokesperson described the allegations as “baseless and sensational” — a “deliberate attempt to undermine the integrity of the House.” The institution’s integrity, apparently, required no assistance in being undermined.
This was not a first offence. In 2023, Premium Times had already exposed a similar committee-run extortion ring targeting universities, colleges of education, and polytechnics — one in which lawmakers used a Bureau de Change operator to collect their illicit funds. That investigation led to an ICPC probe. Not much has been heard about it since.
BRIBERY AS A PRECONDITION FOR LAWMAKING
By August 2025, the corruption had penetrated even deeper. A serving lawmaker publicly claimed that bribes ranging from ₦1 million to ₦3 million were being demanded simply to present motions and bills on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Read that sentence again. A member of the Nigerian legislature cannot exercise his constitutional duty — cannot speak, cannot introduce legislation — without first paying a bribe to do so.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) called it exactly what it is: a grave violation of the public trust and the constitutional oath of office, one that makes a mockery of lawmaking and undermines the democratic rights of every Nigerian citizen.
THE OIL SECTOR: A WOUND THAT NEVER CLOSES
In June 2025, the EFCC arrested former NNPCL Chief Financial Officer Umar Ajiya and other executives for allegedly inflating costs and diverting funds meant for maintenance between 2013 and 2021 — a scheme the EFCC described as one of the largest frauds in the sector’s history.
The 2022 Auditor-General’s report, published in September 2025, revealed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited failed to account for ₦22.3 billion, $49.7 million, £14.3 million, and €5.2 million. Weak internal controls, abandoned projects, and irregular contracts featured throughout the audit findings.
These are not rounding errors. These are countries’ worth of public wealth — stolen from hospitals that have no drugs, from schools that have no roofs, from roads that swallow people whole.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF IMPUNITY
Nigeria scored 26 out of 100 on the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index — placing it 142nd out of 182 countries surveyed by Transparency International. The score has not moved in a year.
That number is not a statistic. It is a verdict.
Nigeria has the fourth-largest economy on the African continent by GDP, yet its GDP per capita is among the lowest in Africa. Corruption has eroded the foundation of Nigeria’s economic prosperity and continues to poison its growth.
The money exists. It always existed. It was taken.
I was born into a Nigeria that, for a brief moment, held the promise of something better. My father, Chief Godfrey Kio Jaja Amachree QC — Nigeria’s first Solicitor-General, a man who served his country at the United Nations and at the highest levels of African diplomacy — believed that public service was a sacred obligation. He did not take bribes. He did not keep stolen money in freezers. He built something that was supposed to last.
What was built instead is this: a legislative chamber where a man cannot speak without first paying for the privilege. A national oil company that cannot account for tens of billions across multiple currencies. A budget process that is, in practice, a shakedown operation.
WHAT MUST NOW HAPPEN
The era of vague, committee-level accountability is finished. The names of those who demanded the ₦480 million from Nigeria’s universities are known to the ICPC, to Premium Times, and to every vice-chancellor who sat in those rooms. Those names must be published. Those individuals must face prosecution. Those assets — the homes, the accounts, the foreign holdings — must be frozen and seized.
Accepting or giving bribes is a criminal offence under Nigerian law, punishable by up to seven years in prison. This is not a matter of opinion or political interpretation. It is the law. The question is whether the law applies equally — or only to those without connections.
In 2012, House Committee Chairman Farouk Lawan was caught on camera accepting a $500,000 bribe from businessman Femi Otedola, in a payment intended to have Otedola’s firm removed from a fuel subsidy scandal list. He was convicted. He appealed. The wheels of Nigerian justice turned — slowly, reluctantly — and many who deserved the same treatment simply waited it out.
That waiting game is what we must end.
The bribe-taker relies on your exhaustion. On your cynicism. On the belief, carefully cultivated over decades, that nothing will change — that naming names is futile, that outrage fades, that the system is too big and too broken to be moved.
I do not accept that.
Name them. Shame them. Make their children embarrassed to carry their names. Make their communities refuse them the honor of chieftaincy titles and front-row seats at funerals. Make their colleagues in the National Assembly look away when they enter a room. Corruption flourishes in silence. It withers under the light of a community that has decided — together, finally, irrevocably — that it will no longer pretend not to see.
The bribe was taken. The record exists. The time for consequences is now.
Kio Amachree
Is a Stockholm-based diaspora activist, political commentator, and President of Worldview International. He writes on Nigerian governance, accountability, and the African diaspora.
