The Trios continue in their blame game tactics while thousand are dying daily, recently about 70 soldiers lost their lives in Boko Haram attack due to mismanagement of funds allocated to fund the war and infrastructure. This is unfortunate and tragic that the 19 years of democratic process have brought about poverty, suffering and sorrow to Nigerians as a result of corruption and mismanagement of funds by the so called rullers who are selfish, ruthless and wicked.
Below is the extract from "My Transition Hours".
In fighting against corruption he quoted Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzogwu (January 15,1966): "Our
enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high
and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that
seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain
in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the
nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before
international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put
the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds."
Jonathan said, Corruption
is as old as Nigeria itself. If not so, the excerpts from the first
coup speech in Nigeria excerpted above would not have come. Every
successive administration in the country has fought corruption one
way or the other but the scourge remains.
The book, My Transition Hours by Goodluck Jonathan can be purchase on Konga.com and on Jumia.com, MarketHub.com, Amazon.com and every leading bookstores in Nigeria for ₦5,000 (paper back) and ₦10,500 (hard back)
There
was a military administration that jailed people for hundreds of
years for corruption and even used retroactive laws to kill people
over certain offenses but they were not enough to serve as
deterrence. Even members of the same administration also have their
own share of allegations of corruption. (referring to General Buhari, between 1983 to 1985?)
Throughout
my presidency, I had to undergo repeated accusations of my government
being corrupt. Despite the blackmail I remain committed to combating
corruption in a more systematic way knowing it was endemic and
systemic. We vigorously devised and implemented a thorough and
strategic plan to fight corruption, albeit within the context of the
rule of law and due process.
No
administration can be either entirely bad or completely perfect, good
governance is a process; so rather than doing media hype or arresting
and parading suspected offenders on television, my strategy was to
strengthen our public institutions, and law enforcement, to prevent
people from even touching the money. We worked to define the
difference between stealing and corruption and passed legislation to
support this. By doing so, we were responsible for arresting more
people and giving the most convictions to people found guilty of
stealing, or mismanaging public resources, than any other
administration in Nigerian history.
Let
me explain how we went about doing this: My serving as deputy
governor, and governor of Bayelsa State, as well as vice president,
and president of the Federal Republic had exposed me to the
challenges, and manipulation of revenues that existed in the
fertilizer industry. We did extensive research and finally were able
to prove how the State and Federal Governments were spending billions
of Naira, and only 10% or less of the fertilizer revenue went
directly to the farmer. It became more than apparent that the
remaining 90% was either being stolen or sent out of the country. It
wasn't easy, but we came in, took action and cleaned up!
So,
how did we do it? We developed what we call the "The ElectronicWallet" through which farmers got their fertilizer revenue directly
deposited into their accounts and people could no longer cheat the
government.
 |
| Former Nigeria Agric Minister, Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshina |
The
December 2014 delay in federal civil servants salaries was the result
of my administration's fight against corrupt officials. I apologized
to those families who suffered, but we believed that to fight
corruption we had to take the necessary measures to establish and
strengthen our institutions. This was a scientific way of combating
corruption.
Our
efforts to combat corruption with the executive branch of government
alone could not effectively succeed. So, I summoned key stakeholders
from all three branches of government to a meeting during which I
personally appealed to them and argued that only an inclusive
approach could bring about success. The judiciary, the legislative
and the executive branches needed to join forces if they were to end
the theft of public resources and stop corruption. I went on to
methodically present my case succinctly :
- I proposed that we work together to curb the corruption— executives alone could not do it.
- When matters get presented to the Judiciary there would not be much results if they do not look at them painstakingly.
- The parliament needed to play a fundamental role in passing strong and effective laws. When they are weak, the judiciary would not be able to do much.
The
Chief Justice of the Federation made his comments thereafter
acknowledging that he felt the same way. He added that he had to take
all the files before the Supreme Court that had to do with corruption
charges. After reading through these cases, he discovered that more
than 80% of them were not corruption per se. They were, in fact,
crimes of stealing. which carry more opprobrium than corruption.
The
individuals involved are however not charged in court for stealing,
but rather in preparing the case files they used the word
“corruption”! It was his submission that I expanded to say that
we should stop calling a spade an agricultural implement as
corruption does not fully capture the act of stealing. A person can
indeed be corrupt without stealing a dime. But those who are
incapable of comprehending this elevated thought or the mischievous
crowd go about mouthing till date that I said "stealing is not
corruption."They never bothered to even check the context in
which I spoke. If you ask many of those mouthing such idiocy all over
the place to quote where I said it, they will tell you "they
said".
It
is important also to note how we supported the institutional
development of secure systems and mechanisms, to curb corruption in
public service and plug revenue leakages. These included the
development of the Government Integrated Financial Management
Platform, The Single Treasury Account (TSA), and the Integrated
Personnel and Payroll Management Systems and the Bank Verification
Number (BVN).IPPIS), in addition to the biometric registration of
civil servants and pensioners, which saved the country over N100
billion previously paid to ghost workers and ghost pensioners.
Nigerian's
support President Buhari's concentrated effort on the anti-
corruption fight, but they are disillusioned when his administration
takes pleasure in regularly reporting to the media that Nigeria and
Nigerians harbor the least desirable corrupt men and corruption cases
ever known to the global community.
The
job of the leader of a country is to market his country abroad while
dealing with challenges at home. President Buhari's advertising
brings up good talking points, but unfortunately the media reports
result only in sound bites and fury. The now eight-month
administration has yet to record any convictions despite all the
allegations of corruption being tried and celebrated daily in the
media (seems the book has been written earlier). These allegations have involved my ministers and
administration. My character and good work are constantly being
assaulted and the allegations continue. The blame game persists.
I
will refrain from saying certain things because of the responsibility
of the office of the president that I once held and also because
there are many cases in court that I will not want to prejudice. But
with my vantage position I know a lot about many people that are
mouthing "anti-corruption" slogan all over the place today.
I had security reports on governors across political parties and what
some leading politicians did to raise money for elections in the two
cycles i presided over against the law and even the interest of the
country.
Suffice
to say at this point that we can not in any honesty fight corruption
holistically for as long as we are trapped in the current political
system that makes it very difficult to use honest funds to capture
political power. We would continue this vicious cycle over and over
again. This was why I mooted the idea of a single tenure after I saw
the bleeding of the system in 2001 but I was misunderstood. We went
through the same cycle in 2015 and in the fullness of time it would
come to light that the party currently in power spent more than us to
prosecute the election and I am not aware of any of their members
with inheritance that could have footed such huge expenditure.
The
options before us as a nation are two. We can continue to strengthen
our institutions and plug the holes like we did with our
institutional reforms I had enumerated or we keep parading a few
individuals in handcuffs to feed the perplexity of those who have
expectations and we are not making delivery to while leaving intact
the architecture of corruption.
What is your take on this assertion by the former president on his position in this blame game tactic and jibe they are throwing all over the place, kindly comment below.
THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION IN NIGERIA A BLAME GAME: Goodluck Jonathan
Reviewed by E.A Olatoye
on
November 23, 2018
Rating:
Reviewed by E.A Olatoye
on
November 23, 2018
Rating:
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