Judges are the biggest bribe-takers in Nigeria: Wow! What a country! By Olu Fasan
IT is official! The judiciary is the most corrupt institution in Nigeria; judges are the biggest takers of bribes in this country. A few years ago, I wrote a piece titled “Lord, give Nigeria bold and incorruptible judges”, (Vanguard, April 25, 2019). When I said that Nigerian judges are fantastically corrupt, it seemed as if I was just making an assertion, as if I was just expressing an opinion as a columnist. But now, we have an official confirmation. According to a recent survey conducted and published by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, Nigeria’s public officials received N721billion cash bribes in 2023, and judges topped the list of the recipients. The 160-page report titled “Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends”, published this month, makes for sobering reading indeed. Those in denial about how utterly broken and rotten things are in Nigeria must now realise the incongruency of their positi...