Why Corruption is So Endemic in Nigeria - Finance Minister Makes Interesting Statements

The Minister of Finance has given reasons why corruption has become so endemic and out of control in Nigeria today.

Kemi Adeosun

 

Kemi Adeosun, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Tuesday, said high level corruption was endemic in Nigeria because it was too easy for public funds to be looted, Premium Times reports.

 

Speaking at a conference organised by the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC, in collaboration with the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Adeosun said the Federal Government was working towards blocking avenues for looting of public treasury.

 

She added that measures are also being put in place to make it harder for looters to hide stolen funds abroad.

 

Speaking on the theme “Practical steps to stopping illicit financial flows”, the minister the government would also improve tax administration to facilitate compliance and prevent looting.

 

“We are taking steps to improve tax administration, to improve compliance and to generally make it a little more difficult for people to loot the treasury,” she said.

 

“My experience from the little time I’ve spent as a minister is that it’s far too easy to do these things in Nigeria, and we’ve got to make it much more difficult.”

 

Mrs. Adeosun said it was better to prevent looting than to recover stolen funds, which she described as difficult.

 

“From the Ministry of Finance perspective, our view is that prevention is better than cure. Recovering money is exciting but it’s difficult. It takes years.

 

“We’re still battling to recover money that was looted from Nigeria 20 years ago. So my perspective as Minister of Finance and as an accountant is: how do we block the money getting out in the first place?

 

“How do we strengthen our controls? How do we create the early warning systems that tell us to flag certain transactions? Let’s stop the money going out; let’s stop the loss, and then we can work on recovery,” she said.

 

According to the minister, Nigeria could have achieved most of its development goals if public finds had been better utilised.

 

She said, “There’s a saying that you can’t miss what you’ve never had.

 

“But when we see our crumbling infrastructure, we are missing what we never had.

 

“We are missing the road, the power, the capital projects that could have been funded with money that has left our shores illegally, or money that is concealed within the country equally illegally.”