Funding Nigerians’ education abroad with illicit funds

IT has long been public knowledge that most occupants of political offices in Nigeria send their children to schools abroad due to the virtual collapse of quality education in Nigeria.

A non-resident scholar of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Matthew Page (who is described as “a Nigerian”), in a study titled: “West African Elites’ Spending on UK Schools and Universities: A Closer Look”, has accused Nigeria’s politically-exposed persons, PEPs, of perpetrating money laundering by using the education of their children and wards abroad as a conduit pipe.

The report, which was commissioned by the United Kingdom government, according to its High Commissioner in Nigeria, Catriona Laing, was meant “to better understand the risk to the UK from illicit finance in West Africa.

We will now consider the report’s finding and take a view on what if any further action is required”.

Page’s report also accused the UK government of reluctance to acknowledge the shortcomings of its anti-money laundering policies or learn lessons from recent anti-corruption failures, especially as many UK schools are clearly complicit in matriculating students linked to known or even convicted “kleptocrats”.