Nigerians’ source of wealth,riches should be questioned –Osinbajo

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Prof.Yemi Osinbajo,The Vice-President-elect on Friday explained how
the Muhammadu Buhari administration would prosecute the anti-graft
war, saying that Nigerians must question sources of wealth of the
rich.
The vice president elect, while delivering the keynote address at the
Abuja edition of The Platform, said the incoming administration would
ensure zero tolerance for corruption by reforming the Justice system.
He said within the last few years, what the country had experienced
was a situation where people got away with corrupt practices, noting
that going forward; the incoming government would make sure that
corrupt people suffer the consequences of their actions.
He said when people are made to suffer the consequences of corrupt
practices; it would send a strong message to everyone that the era of
looting of the treasury was over.
He said, "We have always talked about zero tolerance for corruption
but it is also important that people are made to understand that there
will be consequence for corruption.
"What we have seen so far is that there is hardly any consequence and
people simply get away with it and if you get away with it often, it
sends a message to everyone that there is no problem, and we need to
fix that whole thinking that there has to be a consequence for corrupt
practices.
"People have to explain, for instance, if you are a public servant,
that how come you have 50 houses. Somebody needs to ask you those
questions and some of the reasons people get away with that is our
criminal justice system."
He said in view of the fact that the incoming administration would be
taking the fight against corruption seriously, one of the reforms that
would first be carried out is in the judicial system.
The Vice-President- elect said the nation's judicial system as
presently constituted was slow, adding that this had made it easy for
people to get away with criminal acts.
He said, "Our criminal justice system needs to be fixed. The system is
slow and it almost always ensures that people who have been charged
with offenses would not be tried forever and after a while people
forget that people are on trial.
"We have to fix that criminal justice system to ensure that criminal
trials are speedy and that anyone who is guilty of an offense will be
punished for that offense.
"So there are so many initiatives around what we need to do in that
area. The United States has 300 million people and they have 2.2
million people in jail. We have 170 million people and we have
convicted people of just 12,000.
"Now if you add those awaiting trials, it comes to about 50,000 but
actual convicted people are just 12,000. Truly it shows you that there
is a failure somewhere of our criminal justice system, practically
every one of us knows somebody who has stolen something.
"The truth is that the system of protection, investigation and trial
of people is wrong and the truth is that everybody gets away with
criminality in Nigeria and I think there is a need for us to review
the system such that it begins to work."
In the area of policing, Osinbajo said a country as big as that of
Nigeria needed community policing.
He said it would be difficult for the Nigerian Police Force in its
present form to fight crime in an effective manner owing to what he
described as structural problems.
He said, "We need to look at law and order. The question of policing
our society, how do we police this country? At the moment we know that
policing is ineffective.
"If the police want to deal with the criminals, you and I know that
they are hampered from doing so, they are hampered structurally, they
are hampered by the fact that they are not as well equipped as they
ought to be, and they are not resourced as they ought to be but the
structural problem is the major one.
"A country of this size needs some form of community policing because
criminality is always local, we need to have policemen who understand
the local language, who live in the local community, who understand
the language. So there is logic in it to have community policing."
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