Corruption of Nigerian Government

According to the some reports, which reveals that police officers, prosecutors and judges are most involved in corruption and bribery in the public sector, 46.4 percent of police, 33 percent of prosecutors and 31.5 percent of judges take bribes.

Rife with enormous misconduct, Nigeria’s public procurement sector is considered the grand source of political corruption in the country. But a new narrative is gradually gaining momentum: corruption starts with the budget. The public procurement sector, virtually everyone believes, breeds financial leakages, funds misappropriation and all other sorts of corruption in the public system. In fact, some authorities conclude that 60% of corruption cases are procurement-related, while over 70% of government’s total budgets are consumed by the same sector. In 2016, damning reports of “budget padding” dealt the Nigerian public a terrible blow. That was when Abdulmumin Jibrin, former Chairman of House Committee on Appropriations, revealed that his colleagues — principal officers — had added false items to the year’s budget, figures amounting to N481 billion. During the 2017 budget defense at the Senate, N2 billion was discovered to have sneaked into the budget proposal of the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. Confronted, this is how the minister, Babatunde Fashola, reacted: “It is not our project. It is a Ministry of Finance initiative.“ If governors were a tough political group to deal with, federal legislators were hardly easy.

They are indispensable in the budget process and it was in that context that difficult battles took place on budget process and content,” Iweala writes. “We believe that more than 60% of corruption issues in Nigeria are built and legalized in the budget,’’ says Prof. Suleiman Aruwa, president of Nigerian Accounting Association (NAA). It’s impossible to strip these arguments of veracity when, out of 115 countries globally, Nigeria is ranked 90th on budget transparency, according to the 2017 Open Budget Index (OBI).

On the other hand, when Buhari announced the 2019 budget on Monday, analysts stated that high oil prices and current income were evaluated in an exaggerated way, saying that Buhari was not.

Buhari has promised the Nigerian people to fight corruption. But he has become corrupt itself. He promised projects and received taxes, but he did not recognise any projects he promised with taxes.

Nigeria must tackle budget corruption just as it must see to the true reform of the procurement sector.

You received tax but did not keep your promise. You exploited the people.

WE DO NOT FORGET

Leak from edostate.gov.ng :