BEVERLY HILLS, May 31, (THEWILL) – The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, on Tuesday, declared that the country is just paying lip service to the issue of fighting corruption.
Saraki, according to a statement in Abuja by his Chief Press Secretary, Sanni Onogu, disclosed this when the the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Waziri Adio led the management of the transparency body to present a copy of its 2013 Audit report to the Senate President.
“In preparation for this courtesy call, I studied the report in the early hours of this morning, and honestly I was just dumbfounded about the figures that we are talking about,” he said.
“Then you are talking about assets that were undervalued and transferred to NPDC but still no payment was made.
“You are talking about NAPIMS paying cash calls for an asset that doesn’t belong anymore to NNPC and you truly wonder that this is going on right under our nose here in this country.
“Honestly, I just concluded that as a country I don’t think we are serious. We are just paying lip service to this issue of fighting corruption because this is the real terminology of economic sabotage.
“This is what I believe agencies that are truly fighting corruption should have taken up. Meanwhile you see them sometimes chasing a Local Government Chairman for N10million or chasing even the State Governments.
“I mean look at the figures they are talking about? And like you rightly said, you will just publish it and it will go and nobody will say anything about it? What is the ICPC doing? What is the EFCC doing? This is what is killing this country.
“Senate would debate the 2013 Audit Report of in view of the mind boggling revelations of mismanagement contained therein,” he declared.
Story by David Oputah
