Nigeria is potentially one of the world's wealthiest nations. Its oil reserves rank it in the top 10 nations, and it has enough natural gas to light the entire African continent for nearly a thousand years! Yet it is one of the poorest nations and receives hundreds of millions in foreign aid annually. How is this possible?

International observers have called Nigeria the most mismanaged economy in Africa. As Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo "was pleading for more aid at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in February 2005, four of Obasanjo's state governors were being probed by London police for money laundering. The most galling was the case of Plateau State Governor, Chief Joshua Dariye, who was accused of diverting some $90 million into his private bank accounts…

"In February 2005, Nigeria's police chief, Inspector General Tafa Balogun, was forced into early retirement after investigators probing money-laundering allegations found $52 million hidden in Balogun's network of 15 bank accounts. At the time of his early retirement, Balogun had been on the job for only two years.

"Even Nigeria's senate is riddled with scams and inflated contracts, with proceeds pocketed by sitting senators. According to the president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chief Jaiye K. Randle, individual Nigerians are currently lodging $170 billion in foreign banks—far more than Nigeria's foreign debt of $35 billion" (Thompson Ayodele, Franklin Cudjoe, Temba A. Nolutshungu and Charles K. Sunwabe, "African Perspectives on Aid: Foreign Assistance Will Not Pull Africa Out of Poverty," CATO Institute Economic Development Bulletin, Sept. 14, 2005).

New management

In April of this year, Nigerians go to the polls to elect a new manager. President Obasanjo is concluding his second term and the constitution mandates that he must step down. The world is watching to see what the next president will do about the nation's monumental problems.

Nigeria is the fifth largest oil supplier to the United States (9 percent of America's needs). Under the Bush administration's post-9/11 energy plan, the United States will increase the Nigerian share to 25 percent of America's needs. Other customers include Spain, South Korea, India, France, Germany, Japan, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Thailand.

Yet oil production in Nigeria is a profoundly troubled industry. U.S. counterterrorism officials fear that the country is a prime target for the next front in the war on terror. The American navy now patrols within Nigeria's 200-mile limit, helping to guard against oil theft.

You would think that oil wealth would propel this huge nation—the most populous in Africa—to prosperity. Yet while the nation has earned hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues between 1965 and 2004, World Bank figures show that the annual per capita income actually declined from $250 to $212.

It's one of the poorest countries in the world. "Between 1970 and 2000…the number of [Nigerians] subsisting on less than one dollar a day grew from 36% to more than 70%, from 19 [million] to a staggering 90 [million]" (Michael Watts, "Crisis in Nigeria," Feb. 1, 2007, www.counterpunch.org).

Where the money went

Where did the billions of oil revenues go? Four years ago, President Obasanjo appointed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate. He selected a former policeman and prosecutor as the chief anticorruption enforcer, Nuahu Ribadu.

Ribadu is a "lanky man with black-rimmed glasses and a boyish grin… [and] doesn't come across as someone who [would] instill fear in Nigerian children—let alone corrupt politicians and businessmen… When Nigerian parents want their children to behave, they don't threaten them with a spanking. Nowadays, they say: 'If you keep that up, I'll tell Ribadu'" (David Clark Scott, "Strong Convictions: Nigeria's First Anticorruption Czar," Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 8, 2007).

To date, Ribadu's commission has recovered about $5 billion of an estimated $380 billion that political and military leaders squandered or stole outright.

These comparisons give some perspective on how monstrous that theft is. "That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa [not merely to Nigeria] in almost four decades… [It is] equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent… [It is] six times the American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan" (David Blair, "£220bn Stolen by Nigeria's Corrupt Rulers," The Telegraph, June 26, 2005).

It would be naive to expect a quick turnaround in such massive corruption. Nonetheless, Ribadu's EFCC claims to have reduced theft of the country's oil revenues from a mind-boggling figure of 70 percent in 2003 to "only" 40 percent in 2005.

Initially, many Nigerians believed the EFCC was merely a pawn of President Obasanjo, for it appeared that far more members of opposition parties were being investigated than those of the president's PDP party. Even the vice president was charged with corruption and theft after he switched parties to oppose the president. The EFCC reported that he siphoned nearly $150 million dollars of federal oil money into his private accounts ($90,000 of which was linked to cash found in the freezer of U.S. Congressman William Jefferson).

However, on Feb. 19, Ribadu announced that the EFCC was now investigating President Obasanjo himself for possible illegal business dealings.

In a bizarre twist, the sitting president, vice president, governors and their deputies are exempt from prosecution, according to the Nigerian constitution. The clause was intended to prevent frivolous lawsuits from crippling the government, but it has provided unscrupulous politicians with a legal umbrella under which to pillage oil revenues.

A multitude of problems

Nigeria's oil production represents the worst of this present world in numerous other ways. Multinational corporations grow rich from the oil fields, working from within their walled compounds, where their employees live the lifestyle of any well-to-do Westerner.

Just outside the walls are the poverty-stricken Nigerian residents of the Delta State. Those who can get work perform menial jobs, literally cleaning up the remnants of oil spills with shovels. Others make a living by selling to the foreigners who leave their compounds to venture into the nearby towns. Prostitution is rampant, with all the diseases and humiliation it causes (there are 3.6 million HIV-infected Nigerians).

Only a small percentage of the youths can find work, and many of them migrate to other states. Those who stay drift into violent gangs that fight among themselves. In a further exploitive move, politicians hire the gangs to create problems and/or to provide protection in election season. At other times, the gangs take foreign workers hostage for ransom, which has become a thriving "business."

One of the ways that oil revenues have been stolen is through "bunkering," tapping into the maze of pipelines that crisscross the country and siphoning off oil for sale on the black market. Lately, the gangs are getting into the act, stealing and selling oil to Eastern European nations in return for still more weapons. The gangs are becoming so well-armed that they could fend off the Nigerian military!

Nigeria has natural gas reserves of over 600 trillion cubic feet. Sadly, since 1970, the gas is simply burned off or flared, because there is no infrastructure by which to capture and market it. People in some towns in the Delta literally haven't seen darkness in over 35 years, as they live in the light of pillars of flame hundreds of feet high, spewing smoke and toxins into their environment.

"Health problems associated with gas flares include respiratory diseases, cancer, acute nonlymphocytic leukemia and a variety of blood-related disorders. The environmental problems, including acid rain and damage to water bodies and farms, are no less horrendous" (Nnimmo Bassey, "Trade and Human Rights in the Niger Delta of Nigeria," June 2, 2006, www.worldhunger.org).

Bad news, good news

Currently, with the help of the World Bank, Nigeria is constructing pipelines by which it can begin to market its natural gas to its neighbors. Environmentalists warn that will not end all of the flaring, but the federal government promises to spend 13 percent of oil production royalties on improving life in the Delta.

Nigeria is clearly an important country to Africa and to the world. It is blessed with a number of resources. Yet it has been cursed with some leaders who put personal greed ahead of their responsibility to care for the governed. However, it is a bad-news, good-news situation, with the policing of corruption and the institution of clean-up programs.

Nigerians want—and they should have—a peaceful, secure existence, being able to work and enjoy reasonable health. Some positive steps have been taken in that direction, but many more are needed. A truly perfect government in the hands of any man or woman is impossible for the simple fact that the task is beyond human abilities. That lesson is written in the histories of every type of government known to humanity.

Nigeria is far from unique in this, and the point of this article isn't to point an accusing finger. To the contrary, we applaud the recent courageous efforts to stem the overwhelming tide of corruption. That is a marvelous example of good leadership.

Yet we don't anticipate that the problems will end until every national government comes under still different management, the leadership of Jesus Christ.

Did you know that Christ plans on returning to this earth to clean it up? He isn't merely going to snatch away a few believers and leave the rest of the world to suffer. He preached, and He told His Church to preach, the gospel of the Kingdom, which announces this hopeful change. Read about it in our booklet The Gospel of the Kingdom, which shows you from the Scripture that this has been God's plan all along.

The prophet Isaiah tells us, "There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.

"His delight is in the fear of the LORD, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears; but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, and faithfulness the belt of His waist" (Isaiah 11:1-5).

Only then can there be the kind of life that all humanity desires. The prophet concludes: "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea" (verse 9). WNP