Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has said that there would be no sustainable growth in Nigeria until the battle against corruption is won. He said that corruption is hard to fight because corrupt people in the country are “wealthy, powerful and influential”.
Osinbajo made these remarks when he received Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President Ayuba Wabba and labour leaders at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
“We commend you for taking this laudable campaign to the Villa on behalf of the Nigerian people. For a democratically elected government, we must constantly report to the people and we must show that we are accountable to the people.
“That is why positions like yours have to be received properly and we must find ways to positively take action on the many demands that were raised.When we came on board, there were 22 states that were not paying salaries – some up to six or eight months. That was despite that oil prices were still high. President Buhari decided that salaries of workers across the states must be paid and that was what informed the first bailout.
“We were bailing out at a time we were losing 60 per cent of our revenue on account of what was going on in the Niger Delta. We later did the second bailout; the third was the Paris Club refunds.These are sums of monies owed to states and nobody has ever paid that sum of money,” Osinbajo said
He also said that management of resources is critical, especially when those resources are as small as Nigeria is witnessing today. “We want to ensure that everyone is held to account. If resources were not efficiently managed, we will not be able to do even the things we are doing now because we are operating at less than 60 per cent of revenue as at 2015, today.If we don’t speak up against corrupt officials, who make it look as if there is a witch-hunt, then we will not succeed in the fight,” he said.
Dike Onwuamaeze