US Newspaper LA Times published an article on its website, stating that Nigeria has started to feel the impact of its current fight against Corruption as some government officials with Luxury cars can't afford to buy fuel now. Read the interesting article below...

It’s a tough time in Nigeria’s civil service. The government money that sloshed through bureaucrats’ personal accounts until last year has dried up, leaving many facing a novel fate: They have to survive on their salaries.


Stories abound of mid-level bureaucrats in the capital, Abuja, with luxury houses and multiple European luxury cars, who can no longer pay for gasoline. Others have had to withdraw their children from prestigious foreign schools and colleges.
“There are now civil servants who have to live just on their salaries. They were living above their standard before,” said Mala Mohammad Yaro, an auditor in the Maiduguri state government. “They are now complaining.”
Nigeria has seen many billions of dollars leak out of government coffers in past decades, with the state oil company one of the worst offenders.
Nigeria ranks 136th among 167 nations on the “perceptions of corruption” index compiled by the advocacy group Transparency International, with first being least corrupt (Denmark) and 167th the worst (a tie between Somalia and North Korea).
Corruption in various forms — bribes, overcharging, skimming from government accounts — is so embedded in Nigerian culture that when then-British Prime Minister David Cameron was caught on video this year calling Afghanistan and Nigeria “fantastically corrupt,” the Nigerian president didn’t object. Well, I think he’s being honest about it,” President Muhammadu Buhari told CNN. He added, “I don’t think you can fault him.”
Buhari has unleashed an anti-corruption sweep that has touched people across the country but left bureaucrats, in particular, in despair.
In Kano, the country’s second-biggest city, a civil servant who got his job through a family connection 15 years ago is tall, thin and, these days, gloomy.
“It’s like a tradition,” the civil servant, Ibrahim, said of corruption in the bureaucracy. “Because the government had plenty of money, they didn’t care much what happened.”
Ibrahim, who declined to be fully identified because of the corruption crackdown, says he was not a big-time crook, like the accounting and revenue officials.
“They used to buy houses, marry beautiful wives,” he said. “They used to send their children abroad [for education]. Some of them had many very expensive cars.”
But that’s getting harder now after Buhari implemented a reform last year that is simple and elegant: Government departments and agencies used to have more than 10,000 accounts in various commercial banks. Now there is just one government account in the central bank, the Treasury Single Account.
In the stroke of a pen, myriad scams were wiped out. Banks could no longer lend government money back to the government at exorbitant rates. Bureaucrats couldn’t siphon off bank interest. Money could no longer be discreetly detoured out of the breathtaking tangle of accounts. Scandalously inflated government contracts could be easily traced.
Now the government actually knows where its money is and how it’s spending it.
“The Treasury Single Account has affected us all,” bemoaned Ibrahim. “Civil servants are crying, because everything they did before, they cannot do any more.”
He cannot afford to run his car. Even buying food is a problem. He’s embarrassed when relatives who have always depended on his largess expect support.
“In our tradition, if you have money you will give it to your family,” he said. “But now the money is not even enough for your own needs.”
The biggest thieves, according to Ibrahim, were those who had access to government accounts; other bureaucrats have long been known to generously pad their salaries with bribes.
A World Bank survey in 2014 found that 55% of firms in Nigeria expected to pay bribes or give gifts to bureaucrats or politicians and others to “get things done,” more than double the average in sub-Saharan Africa. Forty-five percent said corruption was “a major constant.”
The effects of such corruption are far-reaching, the World Bank says. Corruption is a major stumbling block toward reaching the U.N.’s sustainable development goal of ending poverty by 2030, according to the bank.
Nigeria’s anti-corruption drive has been made more urgent by the country’s worst recession in three decades, as the oil-dependent economy reels with the decline in oil prices. The economy shrank more than 3% in the second quarter of 2016 alone. Nigeria spends $4.4 billion a year on civil service salaries, 40% of all spending, a figure the government says is unsustainable.
The crisis comes as Nigeria’s oil revenues have been hit further by rebels in the oil-producing southeast, who have blown up pipelines, forcing a drop in production from 2.2 million barrels a day to 1.4 million.
The Single Treasury Account has reduced corruption and helped the government get control of revenue, but it had left commercial banks severely stressed, according to Garba Ibrahim Sheka, an economics professor at Bayelsa University in Kano.
“If we compare the costs and benefits, most of us will say it’s better that the government has come up with this policy because it has checked one of the major issues in the country, which is corruption and theft of public funds,” Sheka said. “Civil servants are complaining. People have been reduced to their natural position.”
But when there’s less to steal, there’s less to spend.
“Blocking someone from stealing public funds will reduce his frequency in the market,” Sheka said. “If retailers can’t sell as much, they will buy less from manufacturers.”
Shopkeepers in Kano say their businesses have shrunk, partly because civil servants — once a large part of their clientele — are no longer flush with money.
“Business has gone down by 40% in the past year,” says Vashir Musa, 33, a shopkeeper selling Chinese-made shoes, Timberland knockoffs and bags. “People have to manage on their salaries. They don’t have a surplus above their salaries, and they need that for the basics like food and school fees.”
The scale of embezzlement in Nigeria is astonishing. Judges, senators, former governors and deputy governors, political staffers and ex-bankers have been swept up in recent months in an unprecedented anti-corruption drive.
Seven judges, including two Supreme Court judges, have been arrested on corruption allegations. The sacked head of the military, Alex Badeh, is being tried on charges of stealing $3.1 million from Nigerian air force accounts to buy houses in Abuja.
A cousin of former president Goodluck Jonathan has been charged with the theft of $40 million that was supposed to pay for tactical communication kits for Nigeria’s special forces.
A former customs boss, Abdullahi Dikko, also has been arrested and accused of pocketing $40 million.
A former national security advisor, Sambo Dasuki, tops that. He’s been in fraud scheme prosecutors say reached $13 billion.
Not all civil servants are distressed about the anti-corruption measures. Yaro, the government auditor, said corrupt, rich civil servants often derided him as a loser.
“I’m prone to honesty in my life,” he said. “Because I embrace a moral way of life, people look down on me as a poor man.”
In the past, some government departments would deny him access to cash books and accounts. The single government account has “made my life easier,” he said.
There are different forms of corruption: non-existent “ghost workers” on the government payroll, overcharging on government contracts, diverting money from government accounts. And bribes.
Ibrahim used to double his salary in “gifts.”
“Before, people used to give money if you did a very beautiful thing for them. But now people have no money in their hands. People used to give me shoes, clothes, even watches,” he said. “You would thank them and tell them you would have a very long relationship with them.
“You’d quicken processes for them. We used to handle those jobs with extra care.”
Like many civil servants, Ibrahim doesn’t believe the anti-corruption campaign will stick. After all, none ever has before.
“It cannot be permanent,” he said.
Sheka, the economist, agreed.
“Even if the government blocks corruption on one side, another side will open. This issue of corruption is in our blood.”

http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-global-nigeria-corruption-2016-story.html

Buhari deserve a second term! No access to free money anymore.

Cc: lalasticlala

Sai baba

For sure this guy is trying. For the first time in my thirty years in this country I feel a government doing the right thing. Those saying all sorts of nonsense are short sited. Let us create a Nigeria where hard work will be rewarded not some stealing and looting.

Sai Baba, Sai Baba , Sai Baba Sai Baba

270 million was used to cut grass

2016 and 2017 budgets are a cesspit of corruption itself

talktimi:
270 million was used to cut grass

2016 and 2017 budgets are a cesspit of corruption itself

PDP gangster. Package yourself well there, Your people messed up this country. Thank God for Buhari. We are restructuring. Go and eat and sleep.

I believe the past and present presidents wished Nigerians well but they are surrounded by gullible and selfish people... I pray we will live to see the product of this fight

atakamus:


PDP gangster. Package yourself well there, Your people messed up this country. Thank God for Buhari. We are restructuring. Go and eat and sleep.

And the blame game continues. When will your anti-corruption czar, the only one that can ascend the position of presidency without "common" waec certificate arrest those corrupt pdp persons and take them to court?
N/B: he must take them to court and try them, not those aso rock and buhari's mouth trial and convictions.

buhari budgeted more than1.35billion for propaganda including lobbying foreign media, we can see some of the that money at work as they try very hard to lobby their Image this Yuletide season just as the supposed defeat of boko haram,chibok girls celebrating Christmas with their families, kebbi rice etc.

the same US media that made killery Clinton POTUS
make Mark Dice catch una

PigMeat:

And the blame game continues. When will your anti-corruption czar, the only one that can ascend the position of presidency without "common" waec certificate arrest those corrupt pdp persons and take them to court?
N/B: he must take them to court and try them, not those aso rock and buhari's mouth trial and convictions.

All these unpatriotic kids can be so annoying! So what should the government do instead? Allow the senseless stealing of the past continue unchecked?


And most of you that are always asking foolish questions or defending corrupt individuals have never even smelt even 50k from any type of corruption so it's not as if it can ever benefit you people!

The funny thing is that those that spoke to this reporters and paper are actually the new faces of corruption and they were talking about members of the PDP that had been displaced. Oyibo man will never understand our wicked and devilish ways. We keep deceiving them.

Lol, they just changed the set of looters to a new one

greenermodels:
buhari budgeted more than1.35billion for propaganda including lobbying foreign media , we can see some of the that money at work as they try very hard to lobby their Image this Yuletide season just as the supposed defeat of boko haram,chibok girls celebrating Christmas with their families, kebbi rice etc.

This one is good na, at least we know their zombies will be employed to copy and paste their propaganda across social media.
imagine how much is being budgeted to clear cess-pit. millions of naira per day.
BTW who is the Landlord that started collecting rent in Aso Rock after bubu moved in?

atakamus:


PDP gangster. Package yourself well there, Your people messed up this country. Thank God for Buhari. We are restructuring. Go and eat and sleep.

your mother is a gangster

All Glory be to Magu and Magu Only.

Buhari if you are foolish enough to sack Magu based on proven false corrupt DSS's Daura secuarity report, then forget 2nd term as this your avowed support will mobilze to get you thrown out.

ONLY MAGU can boldly take down all pdp looters and their supporters in the Presidency like COS, Abba Kyari and DSS DG Daura. Both of these corrupt CROOKS must be kicked out as your wife has recommended. Also your cousin , Mamman Daura has to go as well.


SAI MAGU. SAI BUHARI

talktimi:
your mother is a gangster

If it pains you, see the truth and appreciate it. Buhari is trying period.

Let me tell you not only Government is corrupt its everywhere..You should go to government owned hospitals and then you'll know what I am talking about... If you don't speak their language then you are a gone In higher institutions even if you beat the cutoff mark your admission will be given to someone else because of Federal Character.Is it me that told the person not to read his books and put more effort.. Not just Hospitals and schools. Everywhere! Everyone is after his/her pocket Same thing in the common man.. If people are in dire need of that commodity the price sky rockets.. Why? No reason just because people are in dire need of it and we want to make fast money....For example: On weekdays, Tomatoes will be cheap but on Saturdays it will be double the price.. The same thing on environmental sanitation days (saturdays) because the conductor has seen people are much at the Bus Stop he will increase price of the transport fare. Why? Because he wants to make more money.. (this is prevalent in Lagos though)...Personally, corruption is not just in government agencies but in all of us... we've seen it as a way of life...If people like they should insult me... its the truth!

atakamus:

If it pains you, see the truth and appreciate it. Buhari is trying period.

see zombie forming intelligent o, pls hustle harder because Lie Mohammed has a very nice package for you guys in next years budget

talktimi:
270 million was used to cut grass

2016 and 2017 budgets are a cesspit of corruption itself

A lost soul! What a pity to the wasted sperm. Perhaps condom leaked.

muri4mig:

A lost soul! What a pity to the wasted sperm. Perhaps condom leaked.

zombie thinks he's got a functional brain WTF !!!

Buhari is a certified fraud

Effects of the foreign media image laundering,

2015 is worse than 2016....that is when the almajiris n afonjas sold us to this thing called buhari




lol... tribalism smh