It was 6:30 a.m. in Keffi. I had barely finished my morning routine when I hopped on the back of an okada. I held a torn nylon bag of roasted groundnuts in one hand and a flask of lukewarm kunu in the other. My breakfast. My daily companion. The early morning air was dry, yet the wind bit hard as we moved through one of the steep, red-soil slopes off the old Nasarawa road. The okada rider kept murmuring about the price of fuel. He said it had reached ₦900 per litre and might rise again by the weekend. I paid ₦400 for a short trip that used to cost ₦100 just last year. I was on my way to my modest place of work, trying to make it through another week on Nigeria’s new seventy thousand naira minimum wage.
Later that morning, as I sat at my desk, the fan above me rattled noisily and the electricity blinked off, again. The heat was already creeping in. I had skipped dinner the night before and didn’t expect lunch until much later in the afternoon, if at all. I opened my phone and saw the headline that made my heart stop: ₦210 Trillion in Oil Revenue Missing—Senate Demands Explanation from NNPCL.
I froze.
₦210 trillion? Not billion. Trillion. Two hundred and ten million million. I blinked again just to be sure. But it was there, bold and shocking. It felt like a terrible joke. Only, this wasn’t April Fools. It was real. It was Nigeria.
If you paid me seventy thousand naira every single month for the next two hundred and fifty million years, I still wouldn’t come close to earning that amount. That’s how much is missing, unaccounted for by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, according to a report from the Senate. They’re saying the money disappeared between 2016 and 2023. And now they want explanations.
But despite the enormity of this revelation, no one has been arrested. Not a single government official. No public figures were questioned. The anti-corruption agencies are quiet. EFCC isn’t knocking on anyone’s door. ICPC is not interrogating any board chairmen. No raids, no televised grilling, no dramatic courtroom walk-ins. Just silence.
I remembered how, just a month ago, a young man in my neighborhood in Angwan Lambu was dragged by local revenue agents for owing five thousand naira in taxes. He was humiliated in front of everyone and warned that court action would follow. They even threatened to seize his barrow. But the ones in charge of our oil and our commonwealth, the ones responsible for trillions, they are still moving freely. Some of them are probably having breakfast right now in Abuja, with one meal costing more than my entire monthly salary.
It is hard to believe that in this same country where a poor civil servant can be disgraced for “mismanaging” two hundred thousand naira, the people who allowed ₦210 trillion to vanish are not even named, let alone questioned.
This isn’t just corruption. It is open insult. It is a slap to every Nigerian who wakes up before sunrise to work, who lines up for hours just to buy food, who can’t afford rent, school fees, or hospital bills. It is betrayal.
We are always told to endure. That the economy is struggling. That we must sacrifice. That fuel subsidy is gone and that hard decisions must be made. We are preached to about restructuring, about fiscal discipline, about national austerity. Yet in the middle of these lectures, trillions of naira have simply vanished. Nobody knows how. Nobody is answering why.
The EFCC and ICPC were created to fight corruption. But in moments like this, they feel invisible. They react with force when they want to show off on social media, usually arresting young boys for fraud or detaining government workers who stole what amounts to a minor transaction error. But in this case, where the amount could transform the entire country, they are nowhere to be found.
How can we still call these institutions anti-graft when they have no voice in the biggest financial scandal in our history?
From where I sit now on my cracked plastic chair, in a poorly ventilated rented room that I can barely afford, this scandal isn’t just about stolen money. It is about stolen hope. It is about the farmers in Doma who couldn’t afford fertiliser this planting season. It is about the public school teachers in Lafia who haven’t received proper teaching materials in years. It is about the market women in Obi who walk long distances every week just to fetch water that isn’t even clean. It is about the young men riding okadas, the women selling food on the roadside, thestudents who graduate into hopelessness.
Two hundred and ten trillion naira is not just a number. It is a nation’s potential swallowed whole. It is every road that was never built. Every power line that never worked. Every hospital that lacked drugs. Every youth who lost faith. It is a thunderous silence echoing from every corridor of power.
We are now a country where crime only matters when the poor commit it. The powerful walk untouched. The corrupt rise higher. And the truth dies slowly.
So I ask again. Where is the EFCC? Where is the President? Where is the outcry? Where are the consequences?
I am a Nigerian. I work every day. I earn little. I am expected to pay taxes, obey laws, and remain loyal. But what is loyalty in a country that watches trillions disappear and says nothing?
We don’t want press statements. We don’t want political speeches. We don’t want promises. We want answers. We want arrests. We want resignations. We want people to be held responsible.
Because if ₦210 trillion can vanish without one person losing their job or their freedom, then maybe we are no longer a serious country. Maybe we are no longer governed. Maybe Nigeria is no longer a land of consequences.
And that should frighten every one of us.
