Nigerians Spend N400 Billion In Bribery Annually - ICPC

An official of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) said Nigerians pay an estimated N400bn annually as bribes to obtain public services.

The Principal Investigator at the Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria (ACAN), the research and training arm of ICPC, Suleiman Suleiman, said this on Tuesday.

According to him, many Nigerians do not have any direct contact with many public institutions where a lot of corruption occurs.

”In 2016, PWC conducted research with the aims of finding what Nigeria’s GDP would be by 2030. Based on their forecast they discovered that Nigeria GDP would be around $1,457billion.

”Also, they wanted to know what would be the cost of corruption during that period. That is, if they did the research in 2015, that is 15 years ahead. They found that if Nigeria is able to reduce corruption by that 2030, it would even be higher than that $1457 billion by up to $534 billion.

”It is like saying if you spend money unwisely you would have N20 but when the money is spent carefully, you would have N35. So the figure of $534billion is what Nigeria can have if we reduce corruption.

”The PWC found that 32. 3 per cent of service users are asked to pay a bribe, which is quite high. If the average bribe is N5,300 and you have up to 83 million bribes a year, multiplied by N5,300 and it gives you 4000billion,” Mr Suleiman explained.