Posted on: 02:29 Sun, 20 Mar 2016



Some concerned Nigerians on Friday
flayed President Muhammadu
Buhari’s administration for excluding
suspected corrupt members of the
ruling All Progressives Congress from
the radar of its anti-corruption
campaign.

They agreed that Buhari’s anti-
corruption campaign would not
achieve any success unless
everybody suspected to have looted
public funds, including APC
supporters, is probed.

Their position followed a recent
report that investigations into how
funds disbursed from the Central
Bank of Nigeria into the accounts of
the Peoples Democratic Party
governorship candidates during the
last elections would soon begin.

The PDP fielded 29 candidates
during the last elections.

The Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission had revealed on
Monday that N3.145bn was
transferred from the CBN into
other accounts for election
purposes.

The presidential candidate of the
National Conscience Party in the
last general elections, Chief Martin
Onovo, said there were looters in
the APC as they were in the PDP,
but claimed that it was unfortunate
that Buhari’s government was
going after suspected PDP looters
alone.

He said:-

“The unfortunate thing is that the
citizens have been deceived to
believe that the APC-led
government is fighting
corruption, when the government
is actually promoting the menace.

“Many APC supporters, who have
corruption cases against them,
have not been invited for
interrogation. The Lagos State
Government published serious
allegations against the Minister of
Power, Housing and Works, Mr.
Babatunde Fashola, yet he has not
been invited for interrogation by
any relevant government agency.

“Also, the APC governorship
candidate in Bayelsa State in the
last election, Timipre Sylva, was
brought to court by the EFCC, but
the moment the APC came to
power, the case suddenly
collapsed. Is that how to fight
corruption?

“If the Federal Government is
probing how the PDP got fund for
its campaign, then the
government should also probe
how the APC campaign was
funded.”

Also, the National Publicity
Secretary of the Ijaw National
Congress, Mr. Victor Borubo,
stressed the need to extend the
investigation of election funding
beyond the PDP governorship
candidates to those of other
political parties.

Borubo said:-

“The investigation of parties and
candidates should be done across
board. When you limit it to a
particular party, it begins to seem
like a witch hunt. We have the
APC, the PDP, the All Progressives
Grand Alliance and a lot of other
parties. Their funding should be
investigated across board,
otherwise nobody will take the
ruling government’s fight against
corruption seriously.”

Also, the President-General,
Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, Chief
Gary Enwo-Igariwey, said that
focusing anti-corruption fight on
one political party would be
counter-productive, “as it will send
a wrong message”.

He said, “We have always said that
fighting corruption should be
holistic and not directed at some
individuals or groups so that it
doesn’t send a wrong message.”

Coordinator, Federation of the
Middle Belt People, Manasseh
Watyil, asked the EFCC and other
anti-graft agencies to prosecute
members of the APC and other
parties in cases where they had
been found culpable.

He said states like Lagos and Rivers
where governments had also
allegedly spent public funds on
election campaigns should also be
probed.

He said, “Those states need to be
investigated because probably, they
were being financed by the
government of the day. So if that
happened, nobody is above the law.

If your hand is soiled, definitely
you must be investigated. We think
that whoever must have used state
funds or collected money as a
political party should be probed,
not only the PDP.”

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Yusuf
Ali, asked security agencies to
arrest and prosecute suspected
looters of public fund.

He said, “The work of security
agencies is to investigate crimes
when they suspect that a crime has
been committed. So if they also
believe that other parties have
committed crimes, then they should
go after them and investigate.

The spokesperson, Afenifere, Mr.
Yinka Odumakin, said, “There is no
President that can fight corruption
in this country; for you to get
elected, it needs corruption. The
electoral system is just too
expensive that you cannot access
power through honest means.”

However, the spokesman for the
EFCC, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, told
one of our correspondents that the
anti-graft agency does not probe
political parties but individuals that
are believed to have stolen or
received public funds illegally.

Uwujaren noted that the current
probe was tied to funds illegally
received from government
accounts.