Yemi Osinbajo

The truth is that many, if not most, nations of the world are made up of different peoples - and cultures and beliefs and religions - who find themselves thrown together by circumstance.

If people are stealing the resources of this nation, if people are taking bribes - if judges or persons in authority, whether they are judges or whoever they may be in government, ministers, whoever, if they are taking bribes - it attacks the fundament of our existence as a society.

As you fight corruption, it fights back.

The Nigerian economy is a huge one.

Our vision is for a country that grows what it eats and produces what it consumes. It is for a country that no longer has to import petroleum products and develop a lucrative petrochemical industry.

Our diversity as a people united is also our potential to transform our large deposits of mineral resources and use same for national development.

If the church says we will not accept you here or that we will expose you if you are stealing the resources of the country or stealing the resources of a private company or other establishment, where you work, then we would not have the type of problem that we have in this country. If only the church does so - just the church.

Many would say the reason why they steal is because they want to have an arsenal for future political exploits. It is a lie. It is greed. In any case, even if you want to do that, you have no right to do it.

If the church says you are not allowed to steal, and we will ostracize you in our midst if you did, if what a man has does not measure up to what he has, if we found that a man has more money than he should have, if a man is earning a salary of a civil servant or a public servant and he has houses everywhere, we have to hold him to account.

If this government is doing the right thing by fighting corruption, the Church should support it.

The reason we have Christian president and Muslim vice president or Muslim president and Christian vice president is to have balance.

It is not possible for one tribe to dominate another based on the way God has structured the country.

In stabilizing the macroeconomic environment, we have focused on aligning fiscal with monetary policy and nudging the central bank toward the objective of more market-determined exchange rates.

If there is one person in Nigeria that believes that petroleum prices should not go up by one naira, it is President Buhari.

Our country has the potential not just to be the giant of Africa but a major economic giant in the world.

I want to say that this business of corruption and the fight against corruption is a very serious matter, and sometimes I'm amazed that very little is being said outside of those who are saying so in government. It's an existential matter. I don't know whether it is possible to overemphasize the point, but I think it's a very crucial matter.

Great economies and great nations, prosperity, and abundance of nations and communities are created by men and not spirits.

No matter how much you pray or fast, our country cannot grow without some of us deciding to do the hard work that makes nations work.

It is the resolve of the government that none will be allowed to get away with making speeches that can cause sedition or that can cause violence, especially because when we make these kinds of pronouncement and do things that can cause violence or destruction of lives and property, we are no longer in control.

The quality and quantum of potential investors in Africa is huge.

We in Africa must prepare our economies in that direction that attracts such huge and qualitative investments. It is for us to push, and we must push.

The most important thing for Africa is that whoever wants to invest in our countries should start in manufacturing.

You are not born corrupt. We want to change that mind-set of the people.

Corruption has been tolerated for too long now, and with Buhari, we will, for the first time ever, have a president who will fight corruption. He will act so that people will be deterred from corruption.

We are committed to a continuous engagement with our people to explain government policies, receive advice and criticism.

As we move to diversify our economy, we are particularly aware that we need oil to get out of oil.

It will be wrong of us to approach our grievances by threatening to disobey the laws or by threatening the integrity of our nation.

Africa Rising is as much about improving standards of governance as it is about an increasingly confident youths and civil society. It is also about businessmen and women who are stepping beyond national borders and going global.

Africa cannot afford to underestimate the power of technology to fast-track the continent's rise. Emerging technologies have played extraordinary roles in every aspect of the continent's most touted successes.

There must be more rigorous enforcement of rules promoting transparency in the international banking and financial systems, especially more stringent KYC rules on customer identity, source of wealth, and even country of origin.

The most important thing is that we are on the right path, and we will not deviate from it, even in the face of strong temptation to choose temporary gains over long-term benefits.

We all know that Nigerian jollof rice is the best anywhere. We beat the Ghanaians and Senegalese hands down.

Economic growth is not sustainable without nation-building and, even of greater importance, state building.

The most successful of the nations of the world are those who do not fall into the lure of secession but who, through thick and thin, forge unity in diversity.

Many of the ethnic and other parochial tensions that have tended to create insecurity and outright conflict, time and time again, are largely as a result of failure to deliberately undertake nation-building efforts.

I understand the law of sowing and reaping. It is a spiritual law that has tremendous physical implications. Every time that we delay or frustrate what we can do today, leaving it till tomorrow, we hold back the future. We, too, must reap what we have sown by experiencing delays.

Nigeria's unity is one for which enough blood has been spilled and many hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. Many have paid for the unity of this country with their lives, and it will be wrong of us, as men and women of goodwill in this generation, to toy with those sacrifices that have been made.

We don't have all the time in the world with oil. We have to use oil while it makes sense to do so.

It is in the interest of the government and also the interest of the nation that things are done properly and that there is due process and that we are not unfair.

Hate speech is a specie of terrorism.

No economy can tolerate the level of corruption seen in Nigeria without consequences.

If you are not around when Africa truly gets going, it would be much like the sceptics who stood on the sidelines in the 1990s convinced that China was going nowhere. How wrong they were.

Here in Nigeria, what makes the news is conflict between the executive and the legislature.

Corruption and illicit financial flows are different. But they really must be twinned. This is because, for practical purposes, it is an eminently more sensible approach to treat most of the sources of illicit financial flows as corrupt activity, within a broader use of the term.

Tracing, freezing, and return of stolen assets has proved in many cases to be exceptionally difficult for most African countries.

We in Nigeria have seen just how difficult it is to get back stolen assets from the international financial system, such as banks that ought not have received those funds in the first place if even the most routine questions were asked.

The carnal nature of man is that he places his tribe above others, but the only basis for the power and unity of the church is that there is no Jew or Gentile.

I am so pleased and happy, and I believe that the Almighty God has a plan for our nation by putting us in strategic positions in politics, business, and everywhere.

It doesn't matter where one starts from; it doesn't matter at all where you start from. It is how committed you are, how determined you are, and how hardworking you are that will ultimately make the difference.

The fundamental for the sustainable growth of Nigeria is not in the hydro-carbon industry but in agriculture.