The prize for greed in Nigeria's festival of corruption probably goes to Gen Sani Abacha, the late military dictator, who personally stole between £1 billion and £3 billion.
The British-educated despot made off with these huge sums despite holding power for only five years. Abacha's rule came to an abrupt end when he suffered a fatal heart attack while cavorting with three Indian prostitutes in 1998.
During his heyday, Abacha's equally avaricious cronies bled Nigeria of billions more. President Olusegun Obasanjo's government is still scouring the world for the stolen funds.
Abacha's son, Mohammed, was arrested and charged with fraud, money laundering and embezzlement. But the government agreed to drop proceedings in return for 80 per cent of the Abacha family's liquid assets. About £500 million has been recovered, but the rest is still in overseas bank accounts.
Abacha ruled Nigeria as a grotesque parody of an African dictator. He casually tore up a new constitution in the process of being drafted and imposed his absolute rule for the "good of the country".
The reclusive general, who benefited from British training at the Army's School of Infantry in Warminster, Wilts, was so fearful of his safety, however, that he went everywhere with 2,000 highly-trained troops from the Special Bodyguard Unit.
Vindictive and paranoid, Abacha jailed anyone who crossed him. Mr Obasanjo was sent to prison for three years. The winner of the 1993 general election and Nigeria's legitimate head of state, Chief Moshood Abiola, stayed behind bars until his mysterious death in 1998.
Abacha earned particular notoriety when he executed the poet and environmental activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in November 1995. John Major, the then prime minister, condemned this as "judicial murder" and Nigeria was expelled from the Commonwealth.
This did not worry Abacha, for he retreated further and further into seclusion. Ambassadors in the capital, Abuja, found it impossible to meet him and the only foreign visitors he was willing to see after 1995 were Pope John Paul II and Yasser Arafat.
With little interest in governing Nigeria, let alone addressing its manifold problems, Abacha devoted his time to looting public funds and secreting his gains in a multitude of foreign bank accounts, many in the West.
Yet he did perform one signal service for Nigeria: unlike so many dictators, he did not live to a ripe old age. The heart attack struck when he was only 55.
I think I'm gonna be sick.
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