International Business Times quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on the corruption within the Nigerian banking system:

Nigerian officials charged six central bank workers and sixteen commercial bankers in a $40.2 million fraud scandal on Sunday, just days after the country’s new president, Muhammadu Buhari, took office after winning election on a program focused on ending rampant corruption.

“It was a relatively clumsy scam and the amount at stake is a literal drop in the bucket of the far larger corruption issue,” said J. Peter Pham, head of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. “Hence it still remains to be seen how the new administration tackles the endemic corruption that pervades the political economy” of Nigeria.

“We will know that the anti-corruption push is serious when truly big heads begin to roll,” said Pham, noting that those being arraigned in this case are relatively low- or midlevel officials at the financial institutions, rather than senior executives.

Read the full article here.

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