Vice President, Yemi OsinbajoVice President Yemi Osinbajo, has revealed how religious leaders, traditional rulers and political elites have been frustrating the efforts of the Muhammadu Buhari government to rid the country of age long corruption and indolent.
He said that whenever he wants to sack a public official who has been found to be corrupt, he would get many calls from religious and political leaders not to do so.
Professor Osinbajo, who spoke in a keynote address at the 24th Nigerian Economic Summit plenary on corruption and rule of law, in Abuja today, Monday, said that the Nigerian elite are often times get in the way of ridding the public service of corrupt executives.
The founding dean of Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, Ngaire Woods, who moderated the plenary, had asked Osinbajo to tell the summit who calls him when he wants to sack someone corrupt.
In his response, Osinbajo stated: “I would like to refer to the Nigerian elite, and it’s probably not fair to be that broad, but practically, every segment, because people who have access to you, they could be political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders, whoever has access to you.
“We have a system where people just feel like, ‘why don’t you just give this guy a break?’ “Which again is part of the problem: you don’t get one call, you get several calls.”
Osinbajo said that the government is doing so much to tackle grand corruption and systemic corruption, adding that since he became vice-president, he has seen how much impact corruption can have on a country.
According to Vice President Osinbajo, corruption more than he ever imagined before he came in as number two man.
