Donald Trump is a front-line US presidential contender. He equally sees Nigeria as a country claiming to be the giant of Africa as well as one of the highest producers of crude oil in Africa, but regrettably has nothing tangible to show for it.

After 56 years of independence, Nigerian leaders have been battling on how best to deliver the dividend of democracy to the people. This battle goes on until each government’s tenure elapses.

Quite disappointed about the attitudes of some African leaders, especially Nigeria, Donald Trump says: “Look at African countries like Nigeria or Kenya, for instance, those people are stealing from their own government and go to invest the money in foreign countries. From the government to the opposition, they only qualify to be used as a case study whenever bad examples are required. How do you trust even those who have run away to hide here in the United States, hiding behind education? I hear they abuse me in their blogs but I don’t care because even the internet they are using is ours and we can decide to switch it off from this side. These are people who import everything including matchsticks. In my opinion, most of these African countries [like Nigeria] ought to be recolonized again for another 100 years because they know nothing about leadership”.

When the Federal Government’s N3.1 trillion revenue loss was traced to an individual account, a confused and embarrassed Buhari who before now apparently had believed that he had heard and seen the worst of how corrupt practices have brought Nigeria to her knees, almost lost his cool. The hard fact was brought to Buhari’s attention that a whopping $16 billion – at the official exchange rate of N196, this comes to N3.136 trillion; while, with the parallel market rate of N315, it comes to a whopping N5.04trillion) of the nation’s crude oil revenue loss could be traced to some sharp practices by some individuals in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector under his watch.

The quanta of funds in question are revenue that ought to have accrued to the Federal Government of Nigeria through oil-lifting deals which are now subject of intensive investigations. Trump is privileged to make such remark because the government of the United States of America is helping in the provision of intelligence on how to trace some of the stolen funds from Nigeria. Worse still, Benin Republic and South Africa have both become safe havens for Nigeria’s stolen funds.

Records of the oil-lifting schedules, timelines of transactions as well as proceeds that were meant to have accrued to government has shown that some people just constituted themselves into a parallel government and were just making away with the nation’s resources. The point here is that no matter who is in charge, high technical stealing kept going on in almost every facet of the country's economy.

Donald Trump has seen how Nigeria runs to his country on the premise of its bilateral agreement on intelligence sharing and anti-money laundering surveillance to trace some of the stolen funds domiciled in other countries as well as Benin Republic and South Africa, which of recent have been identified as safe havens for Nigerian stolen funds.

South African government is however said to be on the apparent reluctance to repatriate some funds stashed in the country. It is also discovered that whereas the Federal Government has relaxed its forex policy, there has been a heavy movement of cash (in dollars) from Benin Republic back into the system in Nigeria.

It is suspected that the simmering diplomatic row between Nigeria and South Africa has more to do with the seeming unwillingness of the South African government to repatriate alleged stolen funds that have been traced to that country. Could this be the reason for Zuma’s visit recently?

Trump was right. Stealing in government is like a tradition in Nigeria, no matter the government in power!

Unfortunately he's right