Nigeria, May 28 -- I was pleasantly surprised to learn the other day that the National Orientation Agency (NOA) was involved in uncovering some infractions at the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), one of President Bola Tinubu's flagship programmes. First, the thought of fraud in a newly established government agency given the mandate of ameliorating students' financial burden is scandalous. I said to myself, 'there you go again, nothing good can come out of this country'.

After hearing of NOA's intervention to expose the fraud, it gave me some comfort: although there will always be light-fingered people dipping their hands in the collective cookie jar, some form of oversight, whistle-blowing or outright exposure of wrongdoing can r...