Nigeria’s Minister of finance and Coordinating Minister for the economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, spoke at a forum organized by the Catholic Caritas Foundation of Nigeria under the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN), with the theme, “Blocking Leakages in the Economy Amidst Dwindling Oil Revenue.” During her speech, she emphasized the need for corruption in Nigeria to be attacked from the root causes, while technology must be deployed to block leakages in the economy.
She cited the lack of institutions, system and processes needed to curb the menace, alongside the problem of impunity in Nigeria, as the reasons corruption has been so hydra-headed. “That is what this administration is doing, tackling the root cause of corruption, the problem is that we have been looking at the symptoms and not the causes of the disease. The cause of the disease is that we don’t have the institutions, systems and processes to block and prevent corruption in the first place, that is the only difference between us and people abroad.”
Most Nigerians believe the government treads a softer path when dealing with issues relating to prosecuting people indicted by corruption charges, but Dr Okonjo-Iweala feels the impunity issue needs to be addressed first before this changes significantly. “So if we arrest people for being wrong, which we must, I believe that impunity in the country has to be tackled, but behind that impunity, if you don’t do something to stop the sources, the next set of people will also come. Today, about 14 people are standing trial over the pension scam.
“We have a system that is cash-based, but we have introduced Government Integrated Financial Management System. 14 agencies in December tried to pay more than what was programmed but the system locked them out and this led to the delay of their staff salaries until the agencies were restored manually. We have been able to weed out 62,892 ghost workers and saving about N209 billion.”
She recounted that during her first stint in office as Minister of Finance, Nigeria was ranked second to the bottom on the Transparency International Corruption Index, “it was 1.4, 132 out of 133 countries,” she said. But by 2006, the end of her first tenure, it was 2.2 out of 10. Presently Nigeria is scored 2.7. “I am not saying that 2.7 is a good score,” she went on.”Nigeria needs to move to 6 or 7. Even if we don’t have perfection, we must not sell to our children a score of 2.7, we must fight to move that number.”
