State Governors are Biggest Thieves- Akinjide

Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN), renowned legal luminary and former minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, has said that state governors are the most corrupt people in Nigeria.

He called them “the biggest thieves” insisting that states are not able to pay salaries because “they are stealing. The biggest thieves are the governors.”

Akinjide in an interview with Galaxy Television yesterday, said that states get billions of naira allocation, but in the end, the money is taken away.

Saying that the critical things in life are honesty and integrity, Akinjide said most of those who find themselves in govern­ment lack honour, just as he also blamed poverty for the corruption in govern­ment.

Asked what he knows about the controversial Third Term bid of for­mer President Olusegun Obasanjo, Akinjide said that even an ex-Secretary of State in the United States acknowledged in his book that Obasanjo did tell them about it.

According to him, the former United States Sec­retary of State devoted many pages of his book to their encounter with Obasanjo on his Third Term ambition, saying that if the former president denied that he ever want­ed and bidded for tenure elongation, “it is left for you and I to decide wheth­er to believe him or not.”

Akinjide said there was nothing wrong with the emergence of Senators Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu as Senate President and Deputy Sen­ate President respectively, as they were duly elected.