Osinbajo: About‎ $15bn Lost through Fraudulent Security Equipment Spending

• Says budget implementation starts in days

Tobi Soniyi in Abuja
The Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, has said that Nigeria lost about $15 billion through fraudulent and corrupt practices in the security equipment spending during the last administration.

A statement by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr Laolu Akande, said Osinbajo disclosed this on Monday at the University of Ibadan during a book presentation by the Ibadan-based elite group, House of Lords, which just published an indepth analysis by different experts titled “Nigeria: The Challenges of Growth and Development.”
‎”It was discovered a few days ago that the total amount of money lost just to corruption in part of…and provision of security equipment in the military is closer to 15 billion US dollars,” Osinbajo said.

While observing that the Buhari presidency had kept on a sustained fight against corruption, Osinbajo said the country simply could not sustain the shocking level of public sector corruption in particular.

He said: “When you look at the sheer amount of money that have been embezzled, the sheer amount of money lost from any of these various cases of corruption, you will find that far too much has been lost. “

The vice president also gave an assurance that the implementation of the 2016 budget ‎would start in the next few days.

“By the grace of God in the next few days we will begin the implementation of one of the most ambitious budgets in our history. Ambitious not just in its size but more in its broad range of fiscal and other socio-economic policies,” he added.

He said that the nation’s foreign reserves stood at about $27b and added that the $15 billion figure “is more than half of the current foreign reserves of the country.”

He then told the audience made up of top Nigerian elites drawn from academics, business that what the Buhari presidency was trying to do was to ensure that there were consequences for corruption.
FURTHER DETAILS LATER