Former President Goodluck Jonathan has fired back at the Government of President Muhammadu Buhari, saying that corruption in Nigeria worsened under the current administration, against the claim by the Buhari administration that under Jonathan’s watch corruption was at its highest rate.
Mr. Jonathan had recently asserted during a PDP event in Abuja that his government had better economic policies than that of Buhari and that his government put in place structures which reduced corruption to its barest minimum. The former president however acknowledged that his government did not plug all the loopholes, but boasted that his government left behind a robust economy for the Buhari administration in 2015.
For this assertion Mr. Jonathan came under fire from the attack dogs of the current regime, who claimed that corruption under him was the worse in the nation’s history. One of such was
One of such people was the Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr Osita Okechukwu. He lambasted Jonathan, saying that rather than plug the loopholes that allowed for corruption, Jonathan opened them up further.
But Jonathan would no longer keep quiet in the face of such attacks. In a statement by his former Special Assistant on new media, Reno Omokiri, he returned fire for fire.
The statement posted by Omokiri on his Facebook page on Sunday partly read, “Mr. Okechukwu should note that the premier global agency universally recognized to gauge corruption is Transparency International who releases an annual Corruption Perception Index.
“It may surprise Mr. Okechukwu and his boss to know that the last time Nigeria made progress on Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index was in 2014 under former President Jonathan when we moved eight places from number 144 to number 136 under Goodluck Jonathan.
“That year marked the most improvement Nigeria has ever made since Transparency International began publishing the annual Corruption Perception Index in 1995.
“Transparency International took note of the Jonathan administration’s e-wallet system that cut out the corruption in Nigeria’s fertilizer procurement system, the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) which weeded out 50,000 ghost workers from the Federal civil service, the cashless policy and the fact that the Jonathan government promptly fired two ministers (Professor Barth Nnaji and Stella Oduah) mentioned in corruption scandals.”
Since 2014, Nigeria had yet to improve in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index ranking and had remained 136 in 2015 and still remain 136 on the latest CPI ranking released in 2017, the statement added.
It continued, “In the most recent CPI Transparency International said and I quote “Some other large African countries have failed to improve their scores on the index. These include South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kenya.”
“If it were true that the Buhari administration was really fighting corruption, why hasn’t Nigeria made progress in the CPI?
“The answer is because you can deceive some gullible Nigerians but you cannot deceive Transparency International.
“With a Minister of Transport that admitted to spending $500,000 on a one day dinner for Professor Wole Soyinka in your government, with a suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation who was caught red handed looting funds meant for IDPs and who has not been fired, arrested or prosecuted and with a padded budget scandal that spends borrowed monies on luxuries for favored individuals, you can’t pull the wool over the eyes of Transparency International.
“I suggest he should go to Wuse Market, Abuja, or Mile 12 Market Lagos or even Rimi Market Kano and say that. If he survives the experience then I will agree with him.
“The fact remains that under the Jonathan administration, CNNMoney projected that our economy was the third fastest growing economy in the world with only China and Qatar ahead of us.
“Did President Jonathan ‘railroad’ CNN Money? Or did he also railroad the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who said on October 12, 2012 as follows ‘Yes, we’ve been hearing about China and India for years …but it’s hard to believe what’s happening in Brazil, in Indonesia, in Nigeria too.’
“The fact remains that under Jonathan, Nigeria experienced unprecedented growth. I leave it to Nigerians to determine what they are experiencing today.”
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