Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun
Obasanjo, lashed out at the National
Assembly, saying it is largely an
assemblage of looters and thieves.
Naijaloaded brings you the biggest
takeaways from his statement.
The former president said the
National Assembly, which he said is
shrouding its corruption in the
opaque nature of its budget, haso
oversight the executive.
He accused the President Goodluck
Jonathan-led executive of making
direct payments to the legislature in
order to cover up its wrong doings.
“Apart from shrouding the
remunerations of the National
Assembly in opaqueness and
without transparency, they indulge
in extorting money from
departments, contractors and
ministries in two ways,”He also said.
“They do so during visits to their
projects and programmes and in the
process of budget approval when
they build up budgets for ministries
and departments, who agree to give
it back to them in contracts that
they do not execute. They do similar
things during their inquiries.”
Former President Obasanjo said the
Goodluck Jonathan’s administration
has upped Nigeria’s corruption level
through the huge sums of money it
has been paying to the National
Assembly to stop investigating its
corrupt acts.
He equally pointed that, “Corruption
in the National Assembly also
includes what they call constituency
projects which they give to their
agents to execute but invariably, full
payment is made with little or no
job done.
The former president insisted that
over the years, the National
Assembly never singled out any
corrupt lngled out any corrupt
lawmaker except where the
executive led in the indictment of a
member.
He listed some of the cases where
the executive led in exposing
corruption in the National Assembly
to include those of former Speaker
of the House of Representatives,
Salisu Buhari, and former Senate
President, Adolphus Wabara.
He maintained that majority of the
members of the National Assembly
live above the law in both
misconduct and corruption and
cannot in good conscience carry out
oversight duties on any government
ministry or department.
“When the guard is the thief, only
God can keep the house safe and
secure,” he said. “But I am
optimistic that sooner than later, we
will overcome.
“God will give us guards of integrity
and honesty with the fear of God
and genuine love of their people and
their country.He submitted.
