Nigerians must question sources of wealth -Osinbajo
Osinbajo, while delivering the keynote address at the Abuja edition
of The Platform, said the incoming administration would ensure zero
tolerance for corruption by reforming the Justice system.
He said within the last few years, what the country had experienced
is a situation where people get away with corrupt practices, noting
that going forward, the incoming government would make sure that corrupt
people suffer the consequences of their action.
He said when people are made to suffer the consequences of corrupt
practices, it would send a strong message to everyone that the era of
looting of the treasury was over.
He said, “We have always talked about zero tolerance for corruption
but it is also important that people are made to understand that there
will be consequence for corruption.
“What we have seen so far is that there is hardly any consequence
and people simply get away with it and if you get away with it often, it
sends a message to everyone, that there is no problem, and we need to
fix that whole thinking that there has to be a consequence for corrupt
practices.
“People have to explain for instance, if you are a public servant
that how come that you have 50 houses. Somebody needs to ask you those
questions and some of the reasons people get away with that is our
criminal justice system.”
He said in view of the fact that the incoming administration would
be taking the fight against corruption seriously, one of the reforms
that would first be carried out is in the judicial system.
The Vice-President elect said the nation’s judicial system as
presently constituted was slow, adding that this has made it easy for
people to get away with criminal acts.
He said, ” Our criminal justice system needs to be fixed. The
system is slow and it almost always ensures that people who have been
charged with offenses would not be tried forever and after a while
people forget that people are being tried.
“We have to fix that criminal justice system to ensure that
criminal trials are speedy and that anyone who is guilty of an offense
will be punished for that offense.
In the area of policing, Osibajo said a country as big as that of Nigeria needs community policing.
He said it would be difficult for the Nigerian Police Force in its
present form to fight crime in an effective manner owing to what he
described as structural problems.
He said, “We need to look at law and order. The question of
policing our society, how do we police this country. At the moment we
know that policing is ineffective.
“If the police wants to deal with the criminals, you and I know
that they are hampered from doing so, they are hampered structurally,
they are hampered by the fact that they are not as well equipped as they
ought to be, and they are not resourced as they ought to be, but the
structural problem is the major one.
“A country of this size needs some form of community policing
because criminality is always local, we need to have policemen who
understand the local language, who live in the community, who understand
the language. So there is a logic in it to have community policing.”
The event powered by Covenant Christian Centre had the theme “Business and governance.”
And one more thing... let them give us the assurance of judgement equity. Not that kind of judgement where a high top political official would steal N25bn and made to pay a fine of N3m and on thesame note a commoner that stole the handset of a governor would be given a 200yrs jail term
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