Jonathan’s administration plunged Nigeria into debt – Osinbajo
“There are two reasons why despite high earnings we are poorer – the first is grand corruption and mismanagement of resources. And there is a difference between grand corruption and ordinary corruption.
“Grand corruption is directly stealing from the CBN, directly taking money from the treasury without any contract, no pretences; there’s no caution, you just take money. That was going on and I will give you several examples.
“When I got to the office as Vice-President, I couldn’t believe it. In one day, $292m was signed out and it disappeared. After that period, for two weeks, the Central Bank of Nigeria did not have cash dollar – $292m without any real explanation! We later discovered what became of the money.
“On another occasion, N60bn was moved out ostensibly for security purposes; but we know what happened.
“When you have a corrupt government, large sums of money which can be used for development is simply taken. If you are the President of Nigeria, you can literally say, ‘Go and bring money’.
“Look at a sum of N60bn; when someone can take N60bn; and $292m, that’s almost N70bn. Today, our TraderMoni scheme is costing us N20bn, where we’re giving to petty traders a loan of N10,000 and when they pay back, we give them N15,000 and when they pay back, we give them, N20,000. But somebody will take $292m, almost N70bn. If you have N70bn, you will solve the problem of seven million of those petty traders. That’s the kind of thing we are talking about and the kind of contrast that we’re trying to draw.”
