Nigeria: Billions lost to corruption could be used for fuel subsidy

As a nationwide strike and protests against the lifting of the fuel subsidy paralysed Nigeria last week, analysts say the billions of dollars a year lost to corruption in the oil industry could have been used to leave the subsidy in place. 'We know that because of the corruption and irrelevant people placed in certain key positions in the sector, a lot of crude oil is being lost,' Garba Ibrahim Sheka, a senior lecturer in economics at Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, told IPS.