In 2007, Rotina Mavhunga, a medicine woman conned President Robert Mugabe's government out of about $1-million by bamboozling ministers into believing she could tap diesel fuel from a rock and they believed her.
Rotina Mavhunga, who goes by the alias of Nomatter Tagirira, found an abandoned fuel tank in the bush near the northern town of Chinhoyi in March 2007.She filled it with diesel, attached a pipe to the outlet and concealed it at the top of a rock.
She then summoned a top government official to witness her "discovery". At a signal, a hidden accomplice would open the tap on the pipe and the officials would gasp in amazement as refined diesel poured down the side of the rock.
A cabinet "task force" dispatched by Mugabe to investigate the claim returned to declare that Zimbabwe's persistent fuel shortages were at an end.
Government officials and businessmen lavished money and vehicles on Mavhunga until several months later, when a second group of ministers began to express doubt about the woman's bona fides.
She was later convicted of defrauding the government in 2009.
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Nigerian man Emmanuel Nwude sold a non-existent airport to a Brazilian man Nelson Sakaguchi for the whopping sum of $242 million between 1995 and 1998, the 3rd largest banking scam in the world.
His fraud was the third largest banking scam in the world after the Nick Leeson’s trading losses at Barings Bank, and the looting of the Iraqi Central Bank by Qusay Hussein.
As a banker and former director of Union Bank of Nigeria, Nwude’s position made him privy to some links, information and documents.
Okay. So a thread of the most ridiculous things done by #AfricanPoliticians according to your submissions.
Warning: Some of this content may seem like fiction
Country: Zimbabwe
Year: 2007
A delegation of ministers were convinced to pay a $5million and a cow on the promise that diesel would come from a rock. They were convinced by a witchdoctor who claimed there was an ancestral spirit living in her.
Former President of Malawi Dr. Bakili Mulizi promised to buy a whole village shoes once he got re-elected only to say later to say that he did not know the shoes-sizes of the people in the village when he was asked. #AfricanPoliticians
A thread on African Countries if they were human and in a high school..
Ladies and Gentlemen shall we?
SOUTH AFRICA: This is that rich kid that has white Father and black mother. Rich and spoiled and always gets away with things in school cause of who they is
SWAZILAND: Pretty chubby chick who has had the biggest crush on south Africa but is too afraid to say, knows everything about SA and would do anything for them. Also shy and plays Netball