U-Report: “President Buhari Cannot Fight Corruption Alone”---Nigerian Lawyer

President Buhari

Report By A Citizen Reporter

A Nigerian legal practitioner, Barrister Kayode Ajulo has stated that it is impossible for President Buhari to fight corruption alone, stating that other state governments, organizations and individuals have role to play to ensure that corruption is dealt with in Nigeria.

He maintained that corruption is a cankerworm that must be dealt with in our system and it is so humongous that President Buhari and his Federal Government cannot successfully tackle it alone.

Ajulo who is also the founder of Egalitarian Mission Africa, said one of his motivation in founding the NGO is excising this cankerworm, stating that "any government that fails to address the issue of corruption does not deserve to be taken seriously by the people"

Maintaining that President Buhari cannot fight corruption alone, he said "individuals, organizations other tiers of government I.e. State and Local government including communities, religious and traditional institutions have roles to play,

He said "in Gov. Adefarati and ICPC's case the Supreme Court ruled that combating corruption requires positive and concerted efforts of all"

Claiming that in Nigeria today only Buhari and his Federal Government's agencies are the one known to be tackling corruption, he wondered what the State governors and their administration doing about it, expressing his worries that the Nigerian Governors Forum has never address the corruption issue till date.

He however said that some important baselines have to be established in the scope of the war against corruption.

"The fight against corruption cannot just be limited to the immediate past regime, just as it must not be limited to past civilian regime while shielding past military leaders some of whom were actually the architects of corruption in Nigeria and who rose from not having a single bicycle to their name when they forayed into governance to owning ships and oil blocks without doing any business" he stated.

He also claimed that "Alongside this is also the tendency to make it appear as if corruption is a problem of politicians and not the bureaucrats. The civil service has to be close marked and scrutinized in order to stamp out this scourge."

The lawyer also raised another important aspect of the on-going war, claiming that he is still watching closely as "it would appear as if it is directed more at members and allies of the PDP, while APC members and those PDP and other parties’ members that have jumped ship seem to enjoy a kind of immunity. There are serious allegations of corruption emanating from states against some of the APC chieftains, even those serving in the present government which nobody is talking about."

He urged that, "our legislators need to pass laws to open the space, in Ghana today; they have a novel Whistle-blower Law, with which some corrupt judges were recently exposed through intervention of a lone masked journalist."

He wanted the people to watch and monitor themselves, "let them watch the watchers. Let's open the space for private prosecutors and come and see how the mighty would be falling"

Ajulo also said he Had written to the Attorney General of the Federation to allow his group to prosecute some cases pro bono, Halliburton, Pension scam etc and let see if they will deliver or not.

Finally, he said "We must not also wait until when somebody commit crime before running after him like what of some of our traffic wardens are doing but we must create a system that make such crime impossible and undesirable like the new salary paying system."