It is impossible to fight graft when its origins are in the centralization of a big oil income

Sir you write in “Nigerian graft”, August 12, that “the most important battle at home looks likely to be lost” and yes, at current oil prices, the battle was lost before it even began. Any country where the oil revenues are centralized in the hands of government and where they come to signify more than for instance 5 percent of GDP and thereby make the government wealthy, independently of its citizens, will be swamped by graft, in whatever shades or colours it comes, whether open, hidden, informal or de-facto, whether in pseudo-democracies or real autocracies, whether in Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

What an opportunity was missed in Iraq when someone decided not to implement an oil revenue sharing plan for its citizens! That way Iraq was condemned to a non functioning democracy and to living in graft.