‘Goodluck Jonathan doled out N100bn and $295million cash in two weeks’ – VP Osinbajo

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the massive looting of the nation’s resources by the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan is responsible for the economic crunch the country suffers from under the present administration. Speaking yesterday in Lagos at a ‘Greater Nigeria Pastors Conference’ organised by Rev. Yomi Kasali’s-led Berean Ministers Group, Osinbajo said the Nigerian system is deeply infested with corruption, adding that graft should be pointedly tackled at all levels of institution. According to him, the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration decided to borrow to fund the budget because the nation’s earning had dropped and millions of Naira are still unaccounted for in the last administration. He said: “The theft of resources in this country is the first and primary reason for our poverty. That is why we have to address the issue of corruption pointedly, not once in a while because the system is corrupt; it is a corrupted system that we are running. This is not a system where corruption is just an exception, corruption is generally the rule in the Nigerian system. “It is easy to say how come we don’t have money or why are we borrowing money? If you as an individual have N1million and somebody stole N900,000 from it, you won’t ask the question how come I am poor? You will immediately tie the theft of your money to your poverty. “When we came in, we had a foreign reserve of $32 billion, but there was $15billion used for defence contract that was unaccounted for. Weeks before the 2015 elections, the government then, gave out N100billion in cash and $295million in cash ostensibly for security within two weeks. Those are the reasons why we don’t have money.” Osinbajo stated that despite earning the lowest from oil in the past 15 years, the Buhari administration had spent more on infrastructure and social service than any government in the history of the country. Speaking on the Abdulrasheed Maina’s saga, the VP said the ex-pension reform task force head was an ally of the PDP, adding that the president will decide on the matter soon. “Many of us know what happened to Maina. He was the person that was supposed to head a pension reform commission. He was accused of several different offences.