Politics
2016 budget won’t work if corruption is not tackled – Lai Mohammed
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has identified corruption as the major reason poverty is on the increase despite the steady growth in the amount budgeted for each year since 1999.
He then assured that there will be more money to go round once the vice is successfully tackled.
The minister disclosed this on Monday when he visited two Hausa-language newspapers based in Abuja in continuation of his ongoing consultation with key stakeholders in his ministry to support the campaign against corruption.
According to him, “If only we fight corruption successfully, there will be more money for everybody. If the leakages can be blocked successfully, I can assure you it won’t matter whether oil sells for $10 or $5, we will be able to run this country efficiently.
“If we don’t really take care of corruption, even the 2016 budget, we will not be able to operate because what we have found out is that it is these leakages (corruption) that are making the country to bleed. It is not by accident that between 1999 and today, the budget has been increasing every year yet poverty has also been increasing. Why? Because of corruption.
”In 1999, the entire budget was N947 billion, in 2016, it is N6 trillion. Has poverty gone down? It has increased almost by that margin. The issue of corruption must not be taken lightly. We must fight it as we fought Boko Haram, like we fought Ebola. We must fight it to a standstill,” he said.
Mohammed went on to debunk insinuations that President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war was an orchestrated vendetta against the main opposition party, insisting that it was a battle to pull Nigeria back from the brink and return the nation to the path of economic growth and sustainable development.
He attributed the decay in infrastructure, grinding poverty, stunted economic growth, widespread inequality, maternal mortality and other maladies afflicting the nation to corruption in governance which, he said, must be fought to a standstill for the country to achieve meaningful development.
“I have said it before, there are two devils left behind when the British left Nigeria. The first was tribalism. They planted it as a devil and the second is Religious bigotry. What has these issues got to do with managing people.
“Nobody selected himself that I want to be Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa man. No. You just popped out and whether you are a Muslim or Christian is irrelevant.
“In all religions that I know, you are told to love your Neighbor as yourself. What you will not accept, don’t do it to another neighbor because if you pack up and die, that’s the end. Let us have an impact of governance.” -Chief Bode George On AriseTV News
The Presidential Candidate of our Labour Party in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi has demanded from the Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy to the President, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, the retraction of his wild allegation, linking him as behind the planned mass protest being planned for August.
Obi, writing through his counsel, Chief Alex Ejesieme, SAN of the MADIBA Chambers, said that the allegation which was widely published in social and mainstream media and read by many within and outside the country maligned his hard-earned reputation as a man who indulges in violence when all his antecedents are vivid that he abhors violence even in the face of extreme provocation.
“It’s our client’s conviction that the publication was a calculated plot to demean, ridicule, humiliate and embarrass him by the estimation of every right thinking member of the society”
“They said there is a judgment of the Supreme Court on local government autonomy. I think it is just a distraction. We must face the real issue that we have.
“The issue that we have is that we are not producing enough. We are not productive. Maybe it may be part of the problem, we want to have value for what is being shared but our problem is productivity.
“How much are those LGAs generating within their domains? Can they survive without handouts from Abuja? Handouts from Abuja, is that the way to go? Is it sustainable?” -Governor Seyi Makinde, Oyo At Audience With NUJ
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