Nigeria is where politically exposed persons and bureaucrats empty public treasury into their private pockets and still strut about unashamedly. This underscores the moral abyss into which the country has sunk, especially in the last 16 years. However, most Nigerians are angry at this turn of event and desire that these depraved characters be brought to justice, and quickly too.
This indignation resonates well with President Muhammadu Buhari, who was in London for the 2016 Commonwealth Conference on Corruption, where he asked Britain, and rightly too, to return all stolen Nigerian assets warehoused in that country. Britain is one of the havens for our thieving public officials. However, its Prime Minister, David Cameron, who labelled Nigeria as one of the “fantastically corrupt countries” in the world, is on the same page with Buhari, who has upped the ante in the fight against corruption in line with his electioneering promise. In “My plan to fight corruption in Nigeria,” a contribution to a book presented at the forum, Buhari argues that, paradoxically, corruption flourished and eventually became a way of life under the supposedly accountable democratic governments of the past 16 years during which, by one calculation, the nation earned more revenue than in all the previous regimes. “To confront this challenge, we must start by showing that we have the exemplary leadership, personal integrity and demonstrable political will to do so,” he said.
The zeal is evident in the way the government is handling the $2.1 billion arms scam that involved the Office of the National Security Adviser, which Sambo Dasuki supervised under President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. The money, which was meant for the procurement of arms to fight the Boko Haram insurgents, became a honey pot for Jonathan’s political allies in the Peoples Democratic Party, as they rabidly pursued his second term ambition.
