Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo says
whenever he wants to sack a public official that has been found to be corrupt,
he gets many calls from religious and political leaders not to do so.
Speaking on at 24th Nigerian
Economic Summit plenary on corruption and rule of law, in Abuja on Monday, the
vice-president said the Nigerian elite are often times in the way of getting
rid of a corrupt official.
Ngaire Woods, the founding dean
of Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, who moderated the
plenary asked Ossinbajo to tell the summit who calls him when he wants to sack
someone corrupt.
In his response, Osinbajo said:
“I would like to refer to the Nigerian elite, and it’s probably not fair to be
that broad, but practically, every segment, because people who have access to
you, they could be political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders,
whoever has access to you.
“We have a system where people
just feel like, ‘why don’t you just give this guy a break?’ Which again is part
of the problem. You don’t get one call, you get several calls.”
The vice-president said the
government is doing so much to tackle grand corruption and systemic corruption;
stating that since he became vice-president, he has seen how much impact
corruption can have on a country — and its more than he ever imagined.
Osinbajo, who was commissioner of
justice and attorney general in Lagos state for eight years, said one of the
most frustrating parts of the fight against corruption for him is the slow pace
of prosecution.
He, however, added that the two
conviction of former executive governors secured by the federal government has
shown that the hand of justice may be slow, but it would eventually catch up.
The professor of law said reforms
are important, and the federal government has embarked on a number of them,
including the criminal justice reform, but the federal government cannot reform
state judiciaries.
The vice-president sacked Lawal
Daura, former director general of the Department of State Services (DSS).
He was also involved in the
suspension of Ayo Oke, former director general of National Intelligence Agency
(NIA) and Babachir Lawal, former secretary to the government of the federation
(SGF).
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