It’s Absurd To Say Corruption Fight Is One-Sided, It’s An Attempt To Trivalise The Issue— VP Osinbajo

Vice-President of Nigeria, Mr. Yemi Osinbajo has said it’s absurd for anyone to say the corruption fight is one-sided or targetted at the opposition, speaking at the 27th Ordinary session of the African Union which ended yesterday in Kigali, Rwanda, Osinbajo said the Nigerian people are in support of the fight against corruption in the system.

Osinbajo also added that there was appreciation from other leaders regarding the 500 Billion Naira Social Intervention Programme of the Buhari administration which focuses primarily on women, including the one million market women, traders and artisans who will get macro-credit loans.

“I think people do appreciate that …and our efforts on Social Protection,” Prof. Osinbajo observed in a chat with the media at the end of the summit yesterday.

Speaking further on the anti-corruption agenda of the present administration, Osinbajo said “I think it’s entirely absurd, I think that view is absurd and without foundation or basis whatsoever. We look at corruption from all possible facets.

If you look at for example, corruption on the military, from military procurement, obviously the only individuals responsible for that could be persons who had held office within the period in question and that has been done and clearly the opposition was not in the office at that time.

Those who were in the office were not necessarily opposition individuals. These were Service Chiefs and other personnel who had served for a while.

The other issues for example is the fraud and the corruption that is associated with large sums of money given out by the past National Security Adviser which went to several political figures and again these were large huge sums of money, over 2 billion US Dollars and the sheet size and the enormity of what we are talking about, must not be diminished in anyway or trivialised in anyway by any suggestion that it is partisan. How? in what way?

I think those who make that suggestion obviously want to trivialise a very important programme of the government, a very important fight against corruption and also the strong effort to recover huge sums of money that have been stolen from Nigeria.”