Vice-President Elect Professor Yemi Osinbajo has said that there will be consequences for corruption because people must be able to explain their source of wealth.
Osinbajo while giving a keynote address at The Platform Abuja, organised by Covenant Christian Centre, he said “It’s also important that people are made to understand that there would be consequences for corruption because what we’ve seen so far is that there’s hardly any consequence and so people simply get away with corrupt acts.
“If you get away with it (corruption) often enough, it sends a message to everyone that there’s no problem. And so, we need to fix that whole thinking. There has to be a penalty for corruption. People must be able to explain their source of wealth; a public servant ought to be able to explain how he is able to own fifty houses as a public servant. Somebody has to ask those questions and people have to be able to provide explanations.”
“And one of the reasons why people get away with this is because of our criminal justice system. Our justice system needs to be fixed: the system is slow and it always ensures that people who have been charged with offenses are tried forever and after a while, people forget that they are on trial and those kinds of things.
“We have to fix that criminal justice system to ensure that trials are speedy and that anyone who’s guilty of an offence will be punished for that offence, especially corruption-related offences. There are so many initiatives about what we need to do in that area.
“The truth is that the system of investigation and trial of people is wrong; people tend to emphasize that the wealthy get away with crime but the truth is everyone gets away with criminality in Nigeria. And I think there’s a need for us to rejig the system so it begins to work. This is an area of great passion for me of course – the area of reform in the administration of justice.”
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