Prof. Yemi Osinbajo
The
Vice-President-elect, Prof.Yemi Osinbajo, on Friday explained how the
Muhammadu Buhari administration would prosecute the anti-graft war,
saying that Nigerians must question sources of wealth of the rich.
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 was a situation where people got away with
corrupt practices, noting that going forward; the incoming government
would make sure that corrupt people suffer the consequences of their
actions.
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 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 had 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 on trial.
“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.
“So there are so many initiatives around
what we need to do in that area. The United States has 300 million
people and they have 2.2 million people in jail. We have 170 million
people and we have convicted people of just 12,000.
“Now if you add those awaiting trials,
it comes to about 50,000 but actual convicted people are just 12,000.
Truly it shows you that there is a failure somewhere of our criminal
justice system, practically every one of us knows somebody who has
stolen something.
“The truth is that the system of
protection, investigation and trial of people is wrong and the truth is
that everybody gets away with criminality in Nigeria and I think there
is a need for us to review the system such that it begins to work.”
In the area of policing, Osinbajo said a country as big as that of Nigeria needed 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 want 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 local
community, who understand the language. So there is logic in it to have
community policing.”
The event powered by Covenant Christian Centre had the theme: “Business and governance.”
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