Ribadu advices Buhari on what to do for effective fight against corruption

Former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu, has suggested what the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government needs do to be able to tackle corruption effectively.

He said there would only be little or no success in corruption fight in Nigeria if the justice system is not properly sanitised and the justice sector reformed.

He also said that government must check billions of naira political leaders spend as security votes in the country if it intends to succeed in graft fight.

Ribadu, who was the pioneer chairman of the EFCC, spoke on Friday, during a convocation lecture at the Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State.

The former EFCC boss had earlier in his speech claimed that “nothing positively significant” happened in corruption fight under the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

He regretted how the country’s national resources over the years got “squandered and largely stolen by those who had the responsibility of managing them,” and how oil wells were “shared to individuals at will.”

He said, “Years of mindless stealing and waste of public resources has dimmed the light of prosperity that was all over our country at Independence. Little wonder that we now find ourselves in tough economic condition with the attendant security challenges troubling us from all angles.

He noted that previous administrations put in place stringent measures to help fight corruption like the setting up of relevant anti-graft agencies.

He said, “The Obasanjo administration also went on to evolve other institutional avenues of fighting corruption by carrying out wide-ranging public service reform and establishing pro-transparency agencies such as the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) and the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

“Nothing positively significant happened in the fight against corruption since then, until the coming of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. It is instructive that the Buhari administration rode to power on the back of its promise to tackle corruption which was pervasive under the immediate past administration.”

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On what must be done to ensure success in graft fight he said:

“There would only be limited or no success in anti-corruption campaign if the justice system is not properly sanitised to shoulder that important responsibility. Every individual within the chain of the justice sector needs to be above board, those who cannot uphold the basic tenets of integrity needed for such job should be shoved aside.

“The practice of political leaders spending humongous amounts of money in the name of security votes should also be checked. For example, I see no reason for governors and some other officeholders to be expending billions of naira without budgetary provisions or accountability under the vague code of security.”

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