Presidential aide Lauretta Onochie has accused former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the former minister of education Oby Ezekwesili of influencing Nigeria’s latest position on the 2019 global corruption index, News Digest reports.
Onochie uploaded the duo’s picture on her Twitter account which she captioned ” here are the #AngryBirds who Founded Transparency International. Should we listen to them? NO!” “Should we lose sleep over their rating? NOPE! What should we do with their latest trash? BIN IT!”
Nigeria is currently ranked 146 out of the 180 countries on the 2019 corruption perception index, according to Transparency International. The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption in the opinion of experts and business people, using a scale of 0 to 100, where zero means “highly corrupt” and 100 means very clean.
The report released on Thursday said Nigeria scored 26 out of 100 points, dropping from the 27 points that it has maintained since 2017. In the 2018 index, Nigeria rose by four places from 148 to 144.
In the report, Nigeria also ranked the fourth most corrupt country out of the 19 countries in the West African region. Transparency International said the position of all countries in the report is based on cases of corruption “from fraud that occurs at the highest levels of government to petty bribery that blocks access to basic public services like healthcare and education, citizens are fed up with corrupt leaders and institutions.”
But Onochie has declared that the ratings were influenced by the former president and minister. She said the report is thrash and should be thrown in the bin. She maintained that President Muhammadu Buhari is the “UNDISPUTED Anti Corruption Champion of Africa.” “BANK THIS!” Onochie said.
The TI report was also panned by the
chairman Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Itse
Sagay. “I don’t have the achievement of other countries but this what I can say
as far as anti-corruption is concerned, there has been a great leap forward, no
contest about that in the last four years, the whole fight has been
transformed, there is a government that has been committed with the will to
fight it,” Sagay said on ChannelsTV News at 10 on Thursday. Sagay noted that
President Muhammad Buhari was named the champion of anti-corruption by the
African Union and that was a testament to his commitment to fighting corruption
in Nigeria.
