[wysija_form id=”1″]March 22, 2015 – President Goodluck Jonathan today promised that stigmatisation of Nigerians abroad on the basis of corruption will stop in the next four years if he is re-elected as President.
President Jonathan who was speaking at an interactive session with Nigerian Young Professionals in Lagos said that Nigerians are stigmatized abroad on the basis of corruption because corruption has been over celebrated. The event was put together by one of the greatest Nigerian footballer, Austin Jay Jay Okocha.
“We know we have corruption but it is over-celebrated. We must work together to clear stigmatisation of Nigerians”, he said.
The president said he believes that corruption could be tackled through a two pronged approach, prosecution of corrupt persons and prevention.
According to him, his government has prosecuted and secured more convictions than any other government. He said that it is impossible to stop corruption by chaining people and likened the situation to armed robbery which he said has never stopped despite public execution of criminals.
He said there was no robbery in Nigeria until after the civil war when small arms got into the hands of Nigerians adding that armed robbery in Nigeria started from Lagos State before it spread to other states across the federation.
He said his government is deploying technology in the fight against corruption and protect properties of the Federal Government. “ We have eliminated corruption from fertilizer distribution”, adding that prior to his administration, only 10 percent of fertilizer got to the actual farmers despite the billions invested in fertilizers.
He said that today the products gets to the farmers through e-wallet thus eliminating corruption from the sector. He said government also introduced IPPIS software which has eliminated over 63,000 ghost workers from the payroll thus saving Nigeria billions of Naira.
He said he has also introduced another software that makes it possible for revenue to be collected for government without physical cash. He said that inflation of contract has also dropped through initiative of public procurement agency introduced by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and promised to fine-tune the process.
He put poverty level in Nigeria at 33.1 percent adding that the priority of government is to make sure that Nigerians are able to feed themselves and go to school.
He thanked Nigerians for cooperating with government for the eradication of Ebola Virus Disease. He said he has been able to eradicate polio and other maladies and promised to do more if re-elected.
The young professionals also used the occasion to donate N10 million cheque to families of fallen heroes.
