https://obongodupaulunanam.com/ The distance between what Nigerian law promises and what Nigerian institutions deliver, one specific gap each week. Written in Uyo by Obongodu Paul Unanam and published every Thursday. en Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0100 https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-023.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-023.html Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0100 CourtsPublic moneyElections On February 8, 2023, a man no ministry admits to employing collected $6,230,000 in cash from the CBN's Garki branch on a letter whose every approval is now said in court to be forged. The presidential election it was supposedly for was seventeen days away. On Tuesday the only man on trial for it asked the court to rule that there is no case to answer, and the judge reserved his ruling. The Supreme Court has already taken his houses. The Auditor General says the bank never investigated its own branch. Three years and eight months on, nobody has had to say where the money went. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-022.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-022.html Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0100 EFCC and ICPCElections In September 2006 the EFCC wrote a report saying Nigeria's Vice President had abused his office. It could not charge him while he held immunity. The immunity lapsed on May 29, 2007. Nobody charged him. Nobody closed the file either. On Monday a former lawmaker spent six hours at the commission's headquarters adopting a petition that asks it to act on that report, and by Wednesday the commission's own letter said an investigation had commenced. Atiku Abubakar is the main opposition candidate for president. The election is on February 20. The problem is not that the file reopened. It is that nothing in Nigerian law ever required it to close. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-021.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-021.html Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Asset recoveryCourts Diezani Alison Madueke left Nigeria in 2015. Since then the EFCC has had her Banana Island estate, N7.6 billion in cash, $40 million of jewellery and a string of housing estates forfeited on a civil standard, most of it with nobody arguing her side, and in January 2023 it sold the properties in a single week. In June a London jury acquitted her of all six bribery counts after a five month trial. On Monday the EFCC told a Federal High Court that the verdict has nothing to do with any of it. Legally, the commission is right. That is the problem. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-020.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-020.html Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0100 ElectionsEFCC and ICPC Ifeanyi Okowa was arrested over N1.3 trillion in derivation funds, defected to the APC, and won its Senate ticket for Delta North. Yahaya Bello is on trial and won the ticket for Kogi Central. A leaked recording attributed to the Senate President says Okowa joined out of fear of his cases. The EFCC says both probes are still open. Still open is the point. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-019.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-019.html Thu, 24 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Whistleblowers Civil society, the Code of Conduct Bureau, the ICPC and the EFCC sat on the same panels in Abuja and called it embarrassing that Nigeria still has no whistleblower protection law. The Senate passed one in March 2022. It never became law. The informants behind last week's EFCC petition asked for anonymity because they feared what would happen to them. That is the whole argument in one sentence. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-018.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-018.html Thu, 17 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0100 EFCC and ICPCWhistleblowers Two weeks after the EFCC took credit for dismissing 40 of its own people, a 21 allegation petition against a senior officer surfaced. It had been sitting in the chairman's office since July 9. When a reporter asked about it, the commission's own spokesman said he had not heard of it. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-017.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-017.html Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Public moneyEFCC and ICPC IPPIS was introduced in 2007 for one purpose, to remove people who do not exist from the federal payroll. ICPC has now recovered N941.9 million that the platform paid to hundreds of them anyway. The money is back. Nobody has been prosecuted, and the holders of 467 bank accounts are still unidentified. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-016.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-016.html Thu, 03 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0100 EFCC and ICPCAsset recovery EFCC chairman Ola Olukoyede disclosed that the commission dismissed more than 40 staff for corruption over the past three years, then published a detailed breakdown of where N1.23 trillion in recovered assets actually went. It is the most transparency this newsletter has seen from a Nigerian anti corruption agency yet. It is still not the public register issue 010 said Nigeria needs. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-015.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-015.html Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Public moneyEFCC and ICPC ICPC's own investigation faulted the Budget Office for onboarding the fake PFIPC into the 2026 budget without verifying a single governance document. Nigeria has also now found a second fake agency, using the same playbook, inside a different office entirely. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-014.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-014.html Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0100 EFCC and ICPCElectionsCourts Governor Ademola Adeleke won re election in Osun on August 15, days after the EFCC froze his state's accounts. Hours after his win was declared, he directed the state's Attorney General to withdraw the two billion naira lawsuit against the commission. The question I asked last week, whether a court order existed before the freeze, will now never reach a judge. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-013.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-013.html Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0100 EFCC and ICPCElectionsCourts The EFCC says it froze Osun State's accounts over an eleven billion naira fraud probe. President Tinubu ordered the freeze reversed and called the timing embarrassing. New reporting shows the commission actually froze three accounts, not one, and whether a court order came before any of it remains unsettled on the public record. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-012.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-012.html Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Public money Gbenga Collins told the House committee investigating the PFIPC scandal how he paid N400 million based on a Lexus SUV with federal plates, an office inside the Federal Secretariat, and a director general title that turned out not to exist. He has started selling his property. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-011.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-011.html Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Asset recoveryEFCC and ICPC The Nigeria Association of Auctioneers says the EFCC has no legal right to be both custodian and seller of the vehicles it seizes. The same dispute happened during Ibrahim Magu's tenure and the plan was shelved. This time the commission does not appear to be backing down. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-010.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-010.html Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Asset recovery The House of Representatives just admitted there is no register tracking what happens to anything Nigeria recovers from corruption cases. Not the value. Not the location. Not what it was eventually used for. Twenty seven years of enforcement with no memory attached to it. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-009.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-009.html Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Public money Christian Ebeke told a room of business executives in Lagos that about two percent of Nigeria's GDP in public spending never made it into the official budget documents. Last week's fake agency story had a villain. This one does not, and that is what makes it worse. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-008.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-008.html Thu, 09 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Public money A fictitious council received N1.3 billion in the 2026 federal budget without ever having a legal instrument of establishment. The lawmaker who caught it says the same thing may be true elsewhere. Nobody checked until a fraud allegation forced the question. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-007.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-007.html Thu, 02 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Public money In four years, Nigeria's public debt grew by 380%. Two out of every three naira the government collects goes straight to debt service before a hospital sees a kobo. Nobody in Abuja is legally required to explain any of it in plain language. That is the accountability gap underneath all the others. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-006.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-006.html Thu, 25 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0100 CourtsEFCC and ICPC 60% of corruption cases against Nigerian public officials remain unresolved. Cases involving governors take an average of 6 to 15 years to conclude. That is not a backlog. That is the system describing itself honestly, if you are willing to read the number for what it is. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-005.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-005.html Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0100 CourtsEFCC and ICPC The EFCC secured 1,417 convictions in the first half of 2025 alone. The cases involving real money keep ending in acquittals. A 3.6 billion naira fraud case just collapsed at the Federal High Court. Something is failing here, and it is not only the courts. https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-004.html https://obongodupaulunanam.com/issue-004.html Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0100 Whistleblowers Twenty five years. Multiple bills, multiple assemblies, multiple public commitments to pass a law that every serious governance actor in Nigeria agrees is necessary. The bill still has not been passed. At some point the question stops being why it needs more work. https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/09/06/2026/when-extraterritorial-enforcer-steps-back-west-africa https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/09/06/2026/when-extraterritorial-enforcer-steps-back-west-africa Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0100 International law Outside pressure has long driven anti corruption compliance in West Africa. This piece asks what happens to enforcement when that pressure withdraws, and which regional institutions step into the space. https://internationallaw.blog/2026/06/08/legislative-omission-as-treaty-breach-nigeria-the-aucpcc-and-what-the-ecowas-court-has-left-undone/ https://internationallaw.blog/2026/06/08/legislative-omission-as-treaty-breach-nigeria-the-aucpcc-and-what-the-ecowas-court-has-left-undone/ Mon, 08 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0100 WhistleblowersInternational law In 2006 Nigeria ratified a convention that requires statutory whistleblower protection. Three bills have died in committee since 2001. This piece argues that two decades of inaction now amount to a breach of a binding treaty obligation. https://www.thecable.ng/government-built-a-whistleblowing-portal-but-forgot-to-enact-laws-to-make-whistleblowing-safe/ https://www.thecable.ng/government-built-a-whistleblowing-portal-but-forgot-to-enact-laws-to-make-whistleblowing-safe/ Thu, 28 May 2026 14:04:00 +0100 Whistleblowers Nigeria's federal whistleblowing policy has no statutory force, so no Nigerian court can enforce it. This piece follows a former civil servant who used the government's own reporting channel.