BY JOHNBOSCO AGBAKWURU

Chief Mike Ozekhome is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and a constitutional Lawyer. He was among prominent Nigerians who participated actively in the just concluded national summit on security jointly organized by Vanguard Newspapers and the Nigeria Police Force. In this interview, he described the National Assembly as drain pipe arguing that the country does not need bicameral legislature. Excerpts:

What are your views on the summit?
My views as expressed in this summit today were very strong. That Nigeria is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. There is no doubt about that. Going by the Transparency International Corruption index in 1999, Nigeria actually carried the gold medal, we won the gold cup, by 2000 we won the silver medal, by 2001 we took the little because we took only bronze medal, meaning the most corrupt country in the world, the second corrupt country in the world and the third corrupt country in the world.

Only two months ago the latest release by the Transparency International, Nigeria came 40th in the world. In fact, I can describe corruption as the 37th state of Nigeria, there are 36 states and FCT and of course corruption is the wealthiest state because other states deal in billions when you see their budgets, some have N40bn, N60bn, N100bn, but corruption in Nigeria has graduated to the trillion mark as we could find from the petroleum subsidy brouhaha.

I remember that some years ago Adolphus Wabara was removed as a Senate President because they alleged that he was involved in a N55 million corruption charge, I remember that Chief SM Afolabi the then minister was removed from office because they said he was involved in N50 million corruption case, but today we don’t even hear of millions, we don’t hear hundreds of millions what we hear are billions.

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GOD bless you oga, a point that I have maintained all along. we don't need bi cameral legislature.