VIEW FROM THE GALLERY BY MAHMUD JEGA
The discovery by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission [ICPC] last week of a [fake] National Brands Development and Made in Nigeria Special Project Office, neatly hidden inside Secretary to the Government of the Federation’s offices, hot on the heels of the scandal over the [fake] Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council headed by Mathew Adeyemi, a scramble has started in Nigeria to create many more, much more useful [fake] agencies.
Look, money is difficult to get in Nigeria. A few years ago when a British lad complained that government policies had made money difficult to get in Britain, a member of the British House of Lords said he was 90 years old but could not remember any time in the past when money was easy to get. Imagine; if that was the situation in Britain, here in Nigeria, where it was the same British that first brought this money and imposed it on us, money is doubly difficult to find.
We are hustling for money day and night, come rain come shine. Over the years, Nigerians have tried many fast money-making schemes ranging from 419 to drug trafficking to money laundering to ghost workers to budget padding to kidnapping to small arms smuggling to fake currency printing to bank fraud to hacking people’s accounts to baby factories to ritual killing to oil bunkering to pipeline vandalism to cattle rustling to floating human rights and civil society groups with the hope of attracting foreign money.
