The Certified Fraud Examiner’s training begins with a humbling premise: fraud is universal. The same triangle — pressure, opportunity, rationalisation — turns in Lagos as it turns in London. What differs is the local weather: the institutions, incentives and cultural scripts that make some schemes flourish here and wither elsewhere.
Two decades of examining Nigerian fraud taught me its favourite habitats. Procurement, where discretion meets scale. Payroll, where ghosts are easy to hire and hard to bury. Investment schemes, where distrust of formal finance drives savers into the arms of confident thieves.
It also taught me the anatomy of rationalisation. Almost no one I have investigated believed themselves a criminal. Everyone was ‘borrowing’, ‘balancing’, or ‘taking their own share’. Fraud prevention, at its deepest, is a war over stories — replacing the narratives that excuse theft with ones that honour restraint.
The credential’s real gift was not technique but posture: follow the documents, respect the numbers, presume nothing. It is a posture I commend to every young Nigerian entering law, audit or public service. The country needs examiners more than it needs exclaimers.