There Will Be Consequences for Corruption, Warns Osinbajo

• Criminal justice system to be reformed
• RMAFC recommended remunerations will be strictly adhered to

Vice President-elect, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Friday reiterated that the incoming administration of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) would not condone corrupt practices adding that the administration will ensure consequences for anyone engage in sleaze.

Delivering a keynote address at “Platform Abuja”, organised by Covenant Christian Centre and themed: “Business and Governance,” Osinbajo described corruption as a killer-disease which needed to be jointly defeated in the same way the dreaded Ebola Virus was taken care of.
Noting that there was a real connection between corruption and the dire situation the country has found itself, he said: “It’s also important that people are made to understand that there would be consequences for corruption because what we’ve seen so far is that there’s hardly any consequence and so people simply get away with corrupt acts.”
He said the incoming administration would make efforts to fix the criminal justice system to allow for speedier dispensation of justice, stressing that reforming the criminal justice system would require that there are consequence for every act of corruption.
Osinbajo said: “If you get away with it (corruption) often enough, it sends a message to everyone that there’s no problem. And so, we need to fix that whole thinking. There has to be a penalty for corruption. People must be able to explain their source of wealth; a public servant ought to be able to explain how he is able to own fifty houses as a public servant. Somebody has to ask those questions and people have to be able to provide explanations.”
“And one of the reasons why people get away with this is because of our criminal justice system. Our justice system needs to be fixed: the system is slow and it always ensures that people who have been charged with offenses are tried forever and after a while, people forget that they are on trial and those kinds of things.
“We have to fix that criminal justice system to ensure that trials are speedy and that anyone who’s guilty of an offence will be punished for that offence, especially corruption-related offences. There are so many initiatives about what we need to do in that area.”
Defending the need for punitive measures for law breakers further, he said: “I think it was a previous edition of the Platform where we were talking about the numbers of people in jail in Nigeria compared to the number of people in jail in other parts of the world.
“And just to take a statistic: The U.S. has 300 million people and they have 2.2 million people convicted and in jail. We have 170 million people and we have only 12,000 convicted people. Now, if you add the number of those awaiting trials, it comes to about 15,000 but the actually convicted persons are just 12,000 in this entire country. Now, we must be very well-behaved people – because it shows you that truly there is failure somewhere in our criminal justice system  – practically everyone knows someone who has stolen something.”
“The truth is that the system of investigation and trial of people is wrong; people tend to emphasize that the wealthy get away with crime but the truth is everyone gets away with criminality in Nigeria. And I think there’s a need for us to rejig the system so it begins to work. This is an area of great passion for me of course – the area of reform in the administration of justice.”
On cutting down on the huge cost of governance, he said one of the solutions was to strictly adhere to the provisions of law which had stipulated the remunerations of public servants as recommended by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation And Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).
He added that the incoming administration would also reduce waste in public spending by looking at several other loopholes including overseas travels by public officials.
He said there would be structural reforms in the police stressing that the concept of local or community policing would be pursed, “although there may be challenges which would be dealt with.”
Asked whether the APC could have over-promised Nigerians during the election campaign in view of the current economic realities, the Vice President-elect said even if the economic realities possess a limitation to what it vowed to achieve, government’s commitment and dedication to meeting its targets were critical.
Osinbajo stated further that government would create an environment that would make it possible for small businesses to thrive as well as create a one stop shop for investors to register their businesses and get approvals with ease.
He said the new government would also invest in requisite skills development so as to have a workforce that is in tune with the 21st century technological advancement as well as provide a framework to safeguard intellectual property rights.

James Emejo