Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Has the next campaign already begun?

It's difficult to know from this distance, but it might be that the next presidential campaign in Nigeria has begun. The President is being coy about announcing whether he will run, but the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, made corruption charges that implicate the major opposition party.

Jonathan Administration Embezzled N100 Billion, $289 Million Few Weeks to 2015 Elections - Osinbajo

Nigeria's Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Monday said N100 billion and a separate $289 million were embezzled by officials of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, a few weeks to the 2015 elections…

Osinbajo

The Vice President, who spoke to a cross section of stakeholders in the Nigerian business and economy circle, said the strategic alliance contracts signed by Mr. Jonathan government… were used to embezzle money by the promoters…

"In one single transaction, a few weeks to the elections in 2015, the sum of N100 billion and $289 million in cash were embezzled by a few… When we talk about our economy, we talk about it like it is normal but it is abnormal by every standard, completely abnormal. Nobody should talk about the economy when you have these huge leakages and corruption; corruption that makes what you allocate to capital and infrastructure nonsense," the Vice President said…

Speaking on what went wrong with the Nigerian economy, Mr. Osinbajo said the seed of economic woes the nation faced was planted by the corrupt deals of the former administration…

"But I want to talk about what I think is probably the biggest problem but which we, for some reason, hardly talk about when discussing our National economy. This is grand corruption in the public finance space!"…