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.”
Source: PunchNg