CHOP CHOP

How Nigeria’s Ruling Class Turns a Nation into a Piggy Bank

By Mike Arnold

Here’s how it works: The ruling party sweeps the election. They take the offices. They cut the deals. Then they divide the loot — like pirates splitting plunder on a dark beach. In Nigeria, they even have a word for it. Chop chop. Help yourself. Take your share. Pass it down the line.

This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a business model.

The Economy Is ‘Growing.’ Ask Nobody Who Lives There.

Tinubu’s government has made real economic reforms. Subsidy removals. Exchange rate adjustments. The IMF nods approvingly. GDP numbers tick upward on paper.

Meanwhile, ordinary Nigerians can’t afford to eat.

Inflation surged past 30 percent. Food prices doubled in two years.¹ The naira lost more than 70 percent of its value against the dollar since 2023.² The economy grew, all right. It grew for the people already at the table.

That’s not reform. That’s consolidation.

The Blood Mineral River

Beneath Nigeria’s soil sits an estimated $750 billion in untapped minerals — gold, lithium, tin, columbite, and 44 others.³ A vast amount of it flows out of the country illegally.

Nigeria’s own extractive industry watchdog confirms the government loses $9 billion every year to illegal mining.⁴ Armed groups operating in the north collect rent on that trade — an estimated 10 percent cut flowing to the militias doing the killing, roughly $900 million a year. Nigerian officials and security researchers have documented that a portion of this Blood Mineral money flows to generals and security commanders, paid to look the other way. That explains more about the military’s performance than any incompetence theory ever could.⁵

The gold slides through Niger, ends up in Dubai. Up to 150,000 Chinese nationals are reportedly involved in Nigeria’s mining sector, many operating well outside any legal framework — often in regions of active violence.⁶ In 2022, customs officials seized a single shipment of 25 tonnes of unlicensed lithium. One bust. One headline. The tip of an iceberg nobody wants to measure.

The EFCC traced more than ₦300 billion in suspicious mining-linked transactions to elite bank accounts in Abuja. Most cases went nowhere.⁷ The licenses kept flowing. The mines kept digging.

Oil: The Perpetual Fountain

Then there’s oil.

Nigeria has pumped more than $1 trillion in oil revenue since 1970.⁸ An estimated $582 billion has been stolen, diverted, or disappeared since independence.⁹ Oil bunkering — theft straight from the pipelines — costs the country billions more every year. The NNPC operates with minimal transparency. Audits get lost. Reports get buried. The money flows up, never down.

The Aid Skimming Operation

International aid pours in for IDPs, development, and security programs. An estimated 50 percent of humanitarian aid intended for Nigeria’s internally displaced is diverted before it reaches the people it was meant for.¹⁰ More than $100 million in aid funds was confirmed lost between 2015 and 2020 alone.¹¹ The camp leaders take their cut. The officials take theirs. What’s left trickles down to the widows and orphans.

Foreign Payoffs

Nigeria’s $750 billion in mineral wealth makes it a prize worth paying for. Shell and Eni paid $1.3 billion for a single Nigerian oil block in 2011. Italian prosecutors alleged $1.1 billion of that was diverted as bribes to politicians and middlemen — including the oil minister who originally awarded the block to his own company. No Nigerian official has ever been held accountable.¹² General Sani Abacha, in five years as head of state, stole between $2 and $5 billion — confirmed by Transparency International, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Swiss courts.¹³ General Ibrahim Babangida refused to account for a $12.4 billion Gulf War oil windfall and simply kept it.¹⁴

This isn’t ancient history. It’s the operating manual.

—

Every day that Tinubu’s corruptocracy runs is another day the average Nigerian pays the tab. With higher prices. With camps full of people who can’t go home. With buried children. With a future somebody already sold.

Chop chop.

Rise.

#EarthShaker

Endnotes

¹ National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria Inflation Report, 2024.

² Central Bank of Nigeria exchange rate data, 2023–2025.

³ PunchNG, “Nigeria’s Solid Minerals Wealth Valued at $750bn,” April 29, 2024; Nigeria Mineral Development Commission (NMDC).

⁴ Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI); House of Representatives Committee on Solid Minerals, public hearing, July 2024; confirmed by PBS NewsHour and Associated Press, May 2024.

⁵ Crisis Group, Banditry and Mining in Northwest Nigeria, 2022; firsthand accounts from senior Nigerian officials documented by Africa Arise International field research.

⁶ Premium Times, “Chinese Nationals in Nigeria’s Mining Sector,” 2022; EFCC reporting; Associated Press, 2024.

⁷ EFCC, Illicit Mining Laundering Report, 2023; BusinessDay, “Zamfara Gold Smuggling,” 2023.

⁸ NNPC revenue records; various sources.

⁹ EFCC, Corruption Impact Study, 2023.

¹⁰ UNHCR reporting, 2023.

¹¹ ICPC findings, 2015–2020.

¹² OPL 245 bribery affair; OCCRP / Premium Times investigative reporting; Global Witness analysis, 2019; Milan Court proceedings, 2018–2021.

¹³ Transparency International; U.S. Department of Justice, Asset Forfeiture filings, 2014–2022; Swiss Banking Commission report, 2000.

¹⁴ Wikipedia, Corruption in Nigeria; Nigerian press records; Gulf War windfall, $12.4 billion unaccounted, Babangida administration.