It is alarming and disheartening the ease with which top government officials turn their private homes to overnight ‘central banks’ where public funds are stashed.

A year after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) discovered a whopping $9.2 million and £750,000 in the Kaduna residence of Andrew Yakubu, former Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), it has discovered another $9 million (N2.75 billion) stashed at the house of Paul Boroh, sacked Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

The budget of the Presidential Amnesty Programme was N65 billion in 2017 — same amount that has been retained in the proposed 2018 budget. The cash discovered in Boroh’s house represents almost half of one-tenth of the entire budget of the amnesty programme either in 2017 or 2018.

VALUE OF N2.5BN IN PROPOSED 2018 BUDGET

By looking through the proposed 2018 budget yet to be passed by the national assembly, here are some expenditure that the discovered cash can fund.

To put matters in another context, were Boroh to personally supervise the spending of the said $9million, he would have to spend approximately N7.52m daily for 365 days to exhaust it.