Corruption claims against my government exaggerated, says Jonathan

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has said that some of thecorruption allegations against his administration may have beengrossly exaggerated.Jonathan spoke in the United States at an event titled: “Presidentialelections and democratic consolidation in Africa: Case studies onNigeria and Tanzania” and co-hosted by National Democratic Institute(NDI) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).Jonathan stated that like most governments around the world, theremight have been issues of corruption during his time as President. Hehowever maintained that the story was being unnecessarily embellished,adding that there are ongoing investigations and court processes thatwould establish the truth.For instance, he frowned at the allegation that some officials in hisadministration were stealing one million barrels of crude oil a day ata time when Nigeria’s production peaked at 2.25 million barrels.” To claim that half of that was being stolen on a daily basis doesn’tadd up, otherwise the government wouldn’t have functioned at all toeven be able to pay salaries,” Jonathan said.Jonathan also faulted the issue of $150 billion dollars said to havebeen stole by previous administrations, and the $6 billion which oneof the officials that travelled with President Buhari to the UnitedStates claimed was stolen by one minister under the former President.“We all know that US has denied being the source of this information”,he said.On the alleged misappropriation of the sum of $49.8 billion within a12-month period while he was in office, Jonathan dismissed it as beingoutrageous.He said: “In Nigeria, if you lose $59.8 billion in a year, federal andstate governments will not pay salaries,” he said, adding that thereis no way Nigerian budget can accommodate such a loss without thecountry grounding to a halt.“Of course we brought international audit teams, forensic auditors andthey didn’t see that,” he said, adding that “It is good that thatissue has now been laid to rest as those who first raised it hadadmitted that they were in error.”While addressing the issue of weak African institutions, Jonathanobserved that African democracies are becoming stronger, adding thesituation would have greatly improved in the next decade.He further noted that although some leaders in Africa are still ableto manipulate their way to elongate their tenure, the people areincreasingly raising their awareness and African parliaments arebecoming stronger to be able to resist such tendencies in future.He made reference to Burkina Faso, where he noted that although theparliament approved an extra term for the former president the peopleresisted that, forcing the President and speaker of the parliament togo on exile. Also in Senegal Jonathan, noted that the former Presidentthinking he would win another term increased the tenure of his officeto seven from five years. But the opposition candidate won theelection and returned the tenure to five years, believing that sevenyears was too long for one term.He further cited the case of Nigeria, where he noted that the strongresistance of the Nigerian National Assembly actually frustrated thethird term bill of former President Olusegun Obasanjo “Of course, I was a governor at that time under the People’sDemocratic Party, the same party as Obasanjo, but due to strongresistance from the National Assembly, the third term bid failed.”According to Jonathan, Africa needs strong parliaments to checkmatesit-tight presidents who influence parliaments to consider amendmentto the constitution that would extend their stay in office.“Changing constitutions to eliminate term limits in order to favourincumbents is inconsistent with democratic principles and reducesconfidence in democratic institutions.” On the issue of security contracts for which his former securityadviser, Sambo Dasuki, is currently facing charges, it is believedthat the Jonathan administration spent a sizable amount of moneyequipping all the security and intelligence outfits in the countryover his five-year period in the presidency.But Jonathan at the NDI forum stated that his administration neverawarded a single contract that was worth $2billion, stressing that theeconomy couldn’t have supported such huge amount of money to beawarded at once.“At no time did I award a single contract of $2billion for procurementof weapons”.