Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday called on Nigerians to exert pressures on government to ensure that officials in both public and private sectors who have engaged in corrupt practices, should resign their positions, make restitution and face stipulated sanctions.
Osinbajo specifically urged the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to lobby the National Assembly to promulgate laws that would aid the prosecution of corruption and recovery of stolen assets such as the Proceeds of Crime Act, WhistleBlowers Act and Financial Intelligence Centre Act respectively.
Osinbajo gave the charge in Abuja, while giving the keynote address at the multi-stakeholder dialogue on ‘Empowering institutions and citizens for a successful fight against corruption in Nigeria,” co-organised by Transparency International and Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC).
The Vice President who listed some of the efforts put in place by the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to curb corruption especially in the public service, urged all public officers to follow the example of the President and himself, by “voluntarily making public the assets declaration forms.”
Osinbajo represented by Femi Odekunle, a professor and member of Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) who reaffirmed the present administration’s commitment to zero tolerance on corruption, observed that “corruption is a permanent fixture of our national discourse.
“From 2006 till date, corruption related offences have dominated more than 80 per cent of reported crimes on our dailies. Out of the top 10 global corruption enforcement cases of all times, Nigeria is actively implicated.
“The famous Panama Papers being an unprecedented revelation of 11.5 million files, from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm revealed the criminal exploration of prominent Nigerians. Nigeria is currently ranked 136 out of 168 countries in the 2015 corruption perception index, also with a low grade of 26 per cent success mark,” he said.
Osinbajo, who admitted that corruption had been the main destructive force to Nigeria’s development, alluded to the report that “55 Nigerians have stolen in seven years amounting to about N1.4 trillion.
“Using the World Bank’s rates and costs, one-third of this stolen sum could have provided 640 kilometres of roads, built 36 ultra-modern hospitals (one per state), built and furnished 185 schools, educated 4,000 children from primary level all the way to their tertiary education (at N25 million per child), and also built 20,000 units of two-bedroom houses.”
According to him, some of the measures put in place by PACAC to tackle corruption include strengthening law enforcement and criminal justice practitioners by initiating trainings, and also producing key experts tools such as a corruption case management manual that would specifically guide the administrators of criminal justice when handling corruption cases.
On his part, Yunusa Zakari, CISLAC chairperson, who addressed CSOs and diplomatic corps, noted that corruption has continued to hit hardest at the poor in Nigeria who make up of more than 40 per cent of the population.
