Gashinbaki: Nigeria loses N2.5tr to fraud/ corruption
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The Chairman of the Society for Forensic Accountants and Fraud Prevention (SFAFP), Mr. Iliyasu Gashinbaki has said that N2.5 trillion is lost yearly in the national budget to public sector fraud and corruption.
Mr. Gashinbaki said this while speaking at a virtual induction of 192 associates during the weekend monitored by the Nation.
The SFAFP Chairman said the continent was losing about 25 per cent of annual budgets to these notorious schemes.
He promised that the society would assist in plugging the leakages.
SFAFP listed 10 most common schemes by which public officers bled the country as unlawful use of public assets for private advances; underpayment of taxes and duties on export as well as import.
Others, it said, were fraud and embezzlement; payment of salary to ghost workers; bribery and extortion.
Other are payment for air supply (goods or services not provided or rendered); over and under-invoicing; fraudulent court awards of financial compensations above damage suffered.
The society, Gashinbaki said, would provide technical support for the public and private sectors.
He said the leakage was not peculiar to Nigeria, as it affects other African countries.
“Recent studies have shown that most African governments struggle with the huge debt burden, in addition to huge loss of revenue due to fraud and corruption consistently draining its little resources.
Interesting, the arrowhead of anti-corruption fight in Nigeria, the suspended acting chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Mustapha Magu, is currently facing corruption charges.
A correspondent with ElombahNews, in an earlier report, traced the history of corruption in Nigeria from Independence in 1960 up till the Era of Magu in 2020.
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He recounted that Magu was on acting capacity as an EFCC chairman for the past 5 years.
However, in the Magu era, like its predecessors such as Nuhu Ribadu, Ibrahim Lamorde and Farida Waziri, fighting corruption has been in tatters and becoming imbroglio to Nigeria, he noted.
“Corruption is seriously fighting back as there is serious allegation against Ibrahim Magu.
“The committee set up by the current Nigerian President Muhammad Buhari under the chairmanship of Justice Isa Salami to investigate the Magu’s EFCC for an allegations of mismanagement is now on top gear.
“According to Transparency International (TI) Nigeria is still among top most corrupt nation in the world. When shall Nigeria be a corrupt free nation?” he wrote.
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