Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday revealed how some companies stole $3billion under the ex-President Goodluck Jonathan government.
He spoke at the ongoing fourth edition of the Ogun Investors’ Forum in Abeokuta.
Osinbajo said the Buhari government was zealous about reversing the trend of under-investment in infrastructure.
His speech reads in parts: “We have reversed grand corruption in public finance, and the impunity which attended the conduct of public business especially in the past five years.
“At the Quarterly Presidential Business Forum, I said that the main reason for Nigeria’s recursive growth is not just a matter of our relying heavily on a single commodity, it is the fact that the proceeds of that single commodity were regularly hijacked consistently by a few.
“So, for example in a so called strategic alliance contracts with the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), the promoters of the companies made away with over 3 billion US dollars, almost a tenth of our reserves at a point!
“Here is a list of possible roads 3 billion dollars could have built: Abuja-Kaduna-Kano road, 2nd Niger Bridge, Enugu-PH road, East-West road, Sagamu-Ore-Benin road, Kano-Maiduguri road, Abuja-Lafia-Akwanga-Keffi road, Plus Lagos-Abeokuta (old road).
“In one single transaction, the sum of N100 billion and 289 million dollars in cash were released a few weeks to the 2015 elections, it was not released as such, it was the money embezzled.
“When you consider that, in 2014, when oil prices were an average of 110 dollars a barrel, only N99 billion was spent on Power, Works and Housing. Agriculture and Transportation got N14 Billion and N15 billion respectively.
“So, the total spends on capital in these critical areas I have mentioned was only N153 billion, and over N150 billion was released and shared within three days. This is enormity of what we are talking about; there is no country in the world that can survive on grand corruption on the scale that we are talking about.
“So, we spent, in 2017, N1.3 trillion on capital, the highest spend in the history of the country, earning almost 60% less than we were earning in 2014. So, you can do far more with less if we are prudent with the resources of this country.
“Today, with less revenue but no leakage, we have increased funding capital in Power, Works and Housing, Defence, Transportation and Agriculture by as much as 400%. Weare two quarters out of the recession and firmly on the path of recovery.
“Our external reserves are at their highest levels in five years. Inflation has dropped for 13 consecutive months, manufacturing confidence is on the rise and in 2017, Nigeria moved ahead 24 places on the World Bank’s annual Doing Business Index. And the World Bank reported that Nigeria is among top ten reforming economies in the world.”
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