Mr Michael Osogbo, former Humanitarian Assistant Officer of the UN has supported the speech by Rwandan President Paul Kagame that corruption is not an Africa-only issue.
Kagame, who addressed delegates at the US-African relations’ Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), stated that corruption was brought to Africa by foreigners and that bribery was not a flourishing business in Africa
While speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Abuja, Osogbo said that Kagame hit the nail on the head with his speech.
“Africans have been portrayed as extremely corrupt individuals who cannot survive without bribery and diversion of public funds.
“As the president of Rwanda rightfully said, corruption was introduced by foreigners to Africa.
“Major corrupt acts in the country have been influenced and perpetrated by foreigners too.
“The level of corruption in the continent still isn’t up to what we see in advanced countries.
“We have seen many multimillion dollar firms crash to the ground due to accounting fraud within the firm or from the sale of fake stocks or creating a Ponzi scheme.
“If you check for the biggest corporate corruption scandals of modern time, you will definitely not find any African company on the list.
“African corruption is normally mentioned when talking about government officials spending public funds on their personal needs or people inflating a budget in order to make extra money for personal reasons.
“These developed countries that point fingers at African countries are known to have bigger corruption practices.
“The UN carried out a study in March of 2017 which showed that non-African firms influence 99.5 per cent of cross border corruption cases seen in Africa.
“That means that corruption in Africa is controlled for the benefit of non African organisations that are in Africa or partnered with Africa,” he said.
Osogbo added that Africans had to work to improve their image but should not remain silent when accused of coming from a corrupt continent.
“I am glad that President Kagame saw the need to address and break this down when addressing delegates on U.S-Africa relations.
“As Africans, we have to make sure we stop people from pointing us as the worst in the world.
“We should also not accept accusations when we know that the corruption in other countries is worse than that in Africa.’’