REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, THE VICE PRESIDENT, FEDERAL
REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON THE ROLE OF THE LEGISLATURE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION ON TUESDAY
OCTOBER 18, 2016
The National Assembly, the Presidential Advisory Committee
Against Corruption and the UNODC deserve to be commended for this far-sighted
initiative.
Despite the widespread cynicism about the capacity of the
political class to fight corruption and graft, we have found the will to open
up a public discourse on this all important subject.
Let me also thank Prof. P.L.O Lumumba,(keynote speaker from
Kenya) for what, for me, was the most insightful and most eloquent
extemporaneous speech I have ever heard on the subject.
I have been involved in anti-corruption advocacy and
research, and action since1990. In all of that, I have never heard anyone say
with any seriousness that they support corruption. Indeed everyone agrees that
corruption is ultimately a fatal scourge.
Let me even argue that it is a crime against humanity, given
the fact that in many countries including ours, it is largely responsible for
the abject poverty of the majority and the massive fatalities of the most
vulnerable in our society.
For the majority of our citizens, the greed and mindless
selfishness that portends corruption is bewildering. How do you explain how
anyone can embezzle funds meant to equip soldiers for a war that could consume
thousands and eventually all of us?
Or how in the midst of so much want, how can some seize the
treasury for themselves, their families and friends? And how can anyone argue
after all of that, that all that is required and all that we need to pay
attention to is the technicality of how such people are possibly
arrested?
As the Senate President just pointed out, a few subsidy
scams consumed almost N5 Trillion. When you consider that the budget is N6
Trillion, the size, the scale of the damage is clear. So I am sure that we all
agree that there is no point bringing together this most distinguished, erudite
and knowledgeable group for an intellectual exigencies on the consequences of
corruption.
Indeed, a conference on corruption in which the arms of
government are invited can, in my view, have one objective, and one objective
alone, which is: what is the way out of this existential evil?
So, a gathering like this presents a unique opportunity to
explore a consensus on how to free our nation and its most crucial institutions
from the ravages of corruption or as the President said famously, how to kill
it before it kills us.
Indeed we have a chance to develop a uniquely Nigerian
approach to deal with this problem. I think it is important for us to be humble
and clear headed enough to understand that the coalition that should emerge
from such a consensus is not a coalition of saints, neither can it be a conclave
of only righteous men and women bound by holier-than-thou creed and a crusading
view. No, that will fail.
What we need is a coalition of reasonable men and women of
the Nigerian bureaucratic, political, business and religious elite. Men and
women who believe that the proposition that corruption does not pay is not
merely a moral injunction, that it is an admission of a grave reality in
commerce, in governance or whatever other field of human endeavor.
That a corrupt executive, for example, will destroy all
plans of development, that a corrupt legislature will use its legislative and
oversight functions to enrich itself and compromise its roles of checks and
balances, and the corrupt judiciary will sell its powers over life and death to
the highest bidder and will turn society to the anarchical notion that
self-help is best. That corruption in the capital market or banking system
means that we cannot be sure that our investments will ever be safe. We may
wake up one day to find that the banks or stocks that we put our resources in
have failed because of the dishonest acts of a few. It means that the corrupt
law enforcement officer will settle personal scores with its exclusive rights
to use the force of state power. So, the proposition that corruption does not
pay is simply one that captures the self-destructive nature of
corruption.
The reason why we elect men and women as leaders in the
executive, judiciary and legislature, and why we appoint men and women in the
judiciary is that we desire an orderly society where we entrust the power to
make decisions about how to spend our collective resources for the common good
to a few. This is because reasonable men and women discovered long ago that if
we allow everyone to take care of themselves, we will remain in the state of
nature fighting like savages for our own portion of the meat.
We give power to adjudicate on our lives and livelihood to
the fairest and most honest amongst us who is called a judge, otherwise law and
justice will serve only the strongest and the richest. So the reason why the
elite in different countries of the world decide to fight corruption is quite
straightforward, it is not necessarily altruistic, it is not necessarily a
moral issue. But that first, it protects even the elites itself from being
consumed from the chaos and the conflict that the corruption may cause. And
more importantly if public officials and private sector persons generally
observe a code of integrity, the society itself is saved from a breakdown of
law and order.
Your excellency, the Senate President, Honorable Speaker, we
have an opportunity today to begin an important national project and I wish to
emphasize that this should not be a finger-pointing exercise. What is required
is a consensus of reasonable men and women who realize that the current path
will destroy us all, that such a consensus will produce a coalition of the
like-minded from the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, united by a
common cause and proposition namely; that this Republic will fall and consume
us all if we do not put in place a practical plan to clean up our crucial
public and private institutions.
Thank you all.
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