N210 trillion: Nigeria’s numbers problem

By MAHMUD JAFARThe easiest way to rile Nigeria on the matter of public finance is to throw a number of endless zeroes at us and call it missing money. Nobody needs to explain the ledger from which it was drawn, or the accounting convention that produced it, or whether the sum describes cash that once sat in a vault. The figure alone is enough. Within an hour it has travelled through the group chats, been converted into hospitals unbuilt and roads untarred, and hardened into an article of f