Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has reacted to reports that a strange snake swallowed N36m from vaults in Makurdi office of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, and corruption level in the country.
Atiku, who spoke during the Silverbird Man of the Year award, said, Nigerians must kill such snake in order to eradicate poverty in the nation.
He said, “We have to kill the snake of corruption that swallows the commonwealth that should lift our people up from poverty.
“Whether that snake is in a JAMB Office or any other government office, we must kill it or it will kill us.
“Nigeria needs to be restructured. We must embrace restructuring as something that must be done to fix Nigeria’s broken systems and not just a campaign gimmick that we fish out of our magic hats and deny after we have gotten what we want.
“We cannot spend 70% of our budget on recurrent expenditure at a time Nigeria has more unemployed or underemployed people than the entire population of the Republic of Cameroon.
“When I was in government, we reduced recurrent expenditure by introducing the monetization Policy and by privatizing many government enterprises.
“Today, those policies have been abandoned and recurrent expenditures have ballooned.
“Nigeria needs to be restructured. We must embrace restructuring as something that must be done to fix Nigeria’s broken systems and not just a campaign gimmick that we fish out of our magic hats and deny after we have gotten what we want.”
Speaking on the recent report by Transparency International, which Nigeria ranked higher than in 2015 in terms of corruption, Atiku called on government to go beyond sentiments and be factual.
“We talk of fighting corruption, but let us move beyond sentiments and media trials and look at the facts.
“We must try to identify why, though we have been ostensibly fighting corruption for the past few years, Transparency International is scoring Nigeria even lower than in 2014,” Atiku added
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