The issue of the possibly fraudulent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council is just one more example of the massive level of looting across government. Others are the ₦210 trillion unaccounted funds in the NNPC audits and the $13 billion Coastal Highway contract given to the Chagoury brothers and the president’s son without any public bidding. 

Nuhu Ribadu, now National Security Advisor, claimed in a BBC interview in 2006 when he was head of the EFCC that over 80% of the country’s oil wealth was stolen or wasted by leaders since independence in 1960. 

A study by the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006 found that: “According to IMF, the $700 billion in oil revenues since 1960 have added almost nothing to the standard of living of the average Nigerian. Eighty-five percent of oil revenues accrue to one percent of the population and a huge proportion of the country’s wealth – perhaps 40% or more, has been stolen.” 

The result of this looting is catastrophic for the common people. At least a million people die every year as they cannot afford proper healthcare. In November 2025, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Pate, said that approximately 850,000 newborn and under-five children die every year due to preventable causes. 

Nigeria’s life expectancy sits at approximately 55 years, one of the lowest globally and trailing behind the Sub-Saharan Africa regional average of roughly 63 years. Nigeria was ranked as the country with the lowest life expectancy in the world, according to the October 2025 United Nations World Population Prospects report. 

Public spending on education in Nigeria is around half the average for Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, we have one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world. 

The former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele is currently in court, charged with 20 crimes by the EFCC including stealing $6.23 million (₦11.4 billion). The former Accountant General Ahmed Idris is accused of stealing ₦100 billion, but is not in prison. His successor was convicted of fraud. All these cases show the centrality of looting and corruption to the government. 

Senator Adams Oshiomhole in January 2019, when he was the National Chairman of the APC, said: “once you have joined APC, all your sins are forgiven.” This infamous line captures the reality: corruption is not incidental, it is institutionalized. 

As corruption and inequality are intimately linked, the best way to reduce corruption is to reduce inequality. The simplest way to do this is to increase the minimum wage and the amount of public funding for education and health. 

But looting today is not just the product of individual greed, it is the logic of a system designed to enrich a minority while the majority suffer. A state that survives on oil rents has no need to listen to the people it rules, until those people make themselves impossible to ignore. That is what a minimum wage struggle really is: not a plea for charity, but an attempt to force the state to reckon with the people who keep the country running. Every kobo won in wages, every naira redirected from a contractor’s pocket into a public hospital, is a naira the ruling class cannot loot. 

This is why the fight against corruption cannot be left to EFCC chairmen, anti-graft courts, or the next election. It will not be settled in a courtroom. It will be settled by organised workers refusing to accept that looting is simply how things are. Only mass struggle through the NLC, trade unions, and broader working-class organisation can break this cycle. Anti-corruption cannot be separated from the fight against inequality, exploitation, and the capitalist system itself.