Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister has revealed the “dirty secret” behind the funding of political campaigns in Nigeria.
Okonjo-Iweala said some government’s funds are diverted by politicians during campaigns.
The former Managing Director of World Bank stated this while speaking about her recent book, “Fighting Corruption is Dangerous” at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
She noted that it was not enough to fight the symptoms of corruption, while the root causes fester on.
According to Okonjo-Iweala, “People are happy to see the symptoms being taken care of, punitive measure, you know it makes big headlines when people are hauled off to jail and the media blasts the story, which is good, there ought to be consequences and punitive actions but it’s not enough.
“If you don’t fix some of the root causes, the next set of people will come in, and with those opportunities, they might do the same thing.
“The type of democracy we’ve adopted is costly, you have to campaign, you have to have money to campaign and it is a dirty little secret nobody talks about, how do you finance this campaigns?
“Part of the monies for the treasury are diverted to finance political campaigns. Is this right? The answer is no.”
The former Minister of Finance, had revealed why she refused to resign from the past administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.
