The Federal Government has reacted to the rating of the Transparency International (TI), which ranked Nigeria low in its latest international Corruption Perception index.
Speaking about the rating, Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, said Nigeria does not fight corruption to impress the TI.
Mohammed made this known on Tuesday in London when he featured on respective interview session with some international media organisations.
The minister said the position by the organisation that Nigeria does worse in fighting corruption is incorrect and the government is unhappy about the development.
According to him, “In any event, we are not fighting corruption because we want to impress any organisation. We are fighting corruption because we believed that without fighting the menace, the much-sought development will not happen and we have results to show for fighting corruption.
“We have put in place policies and legislations that have tamed the monster called corruption. For instance, apart from the TSA, which has saved us billions of Naira, we put in place transparency portal which enables every Nigerians to see how much is being spent by government everyday.
“Under the transparency portal regulation, any expenditure above N5 billion must be reported and that gives every Nigerian the opportunity to know exactly what is going on.
“We will continue to fight corruption and we know that are winning the war. For those who says that the anti corruption fight is selective, how do you say that when serving Senators and past governors who were members of the ruling party are now serving jail terms,’”
The minister stressed that for the first time in the history of the country, high profile people have been convicted of corruption charges.
He, therefore, called on Nigerians to continue to support and encourage the government in the fight against corruption and disregard the baseless rating of the TI.