1 Phone: Hello. Bank of Nigeria. How can we help you?
1 Nigerian Finance Minister: Hi. This is the Minister of Finance.
2 Nigerian Finance Minister: We have a federal budget surplus of $30,000,000. I'd like to transfer it to the U.S. Treasury to reduce our foreign debt.
3 Phone: Unfortunately we can only do that through a private account of a foreign national. If someone agrees to let us use their account number, we can do it, no problem.
4 Nigerian Finance Minister: Okay. That should be easy to arrange. I'll send some emails and offer people 10% if they help us out.

2012-07-07 Rerun commentary: Nigeria's foreign debt is almost as difficult to nail down as the Glyphis font. Various news items over the past twelve months report it at figures ranging from US$5 billion to US$44 billion. Not being an economist by any means, I have no idea if this is an unusual amount. Either way, a mere $30 million is a pretty small dent. Though I suppose it's better to repay some of it than none of it.

Now if only the Minister can find someone willing to hand over their bank account details...

Also, one must really wonder what sort of business practices the Bank of Nigeria gets up to here. Presumably it's because all their code is still written in COBOL.