Six Billion Dollar Nigerian oil swindle

The West African country of Nigeria has been swindled out of an estimated US$6 billion from the sale of one of its most promising oilfields.

This follows revelations by a group of economists, lawyers and auditors that instead of getting most of the money from the sale to Shell and the Italian oil firm Eni, Nigeria got only US$185 million in a huge scandal.

The scandal involved paying some US$1billion in bribes to government officials and their agents. One famous Nigerian, the then Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, the first female President of OPEC, and former president Goodluck Johnathan have been implicated in the scandal.

The huge sum lost to Nigeria as a result of this massive act of corruption, is estimated to be DOUBLE THE COMBINED BUDGETS FOR EDUCATION AND HEALTH in Nigeria, in a deal extremely favourable to the companies and hurtful to Nigeria, which, in spite of its oil wealth, has about 87 million people living in extreme poverty.