Obasanjo reacts to Maina's botched recall

The former president blamed corruption for
most of the country's problem
- He said the EFCC and ICPC have been politicised
and weakened
Former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
has reacted to the botched recall of a former
chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team,
Abdulrasheed Maina, saying it should never
have happened.
Thisday reports that the former president
spoke at the 2017 Foundation Day Public
Lecture titled: “Corruption and the Challenges
of the African Child” on Saturday, October 28
in Ibadan.
READ ALSO: Army intercepts Boko Haram
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The former president identified corruption as
the key cause of Nigeria’s problem and
insisted that the fight against it must be
comprehensive.
He said: “Corruption must be punished, and
must be seen to be punished. Any accomplice
in corruption and cover-up and any failure to
punish must also earn punishment.
“We cannot afford to have sacred cows in the
fight against corruption. The Maina saga
should never have been allowed to occur. It is
not in tandem with the fight against
corruption.”
“When I was elected President in 1999, my
administration took the issue of corruption
very seriously and we established Independent
Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences
Commission as well as Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission, among other
anticorruption initiatives. These institutions
were provided the political support needed to
fight corruption and they did their best.
“But once we left office, they became very
politicised and weakened to the point that they
were unable to discharge their duties. In fact,
one of the governors, who had been labelled
and gone to jail for corruption, was to look for
replacement for Nuhu Ribadu (the pioneering
chairman of EFCC), and you know the type of
replacement he would get.
“There is need to support and strengthen these
institutions, especially in the area of
prosecution. The law enforcement agencies or
the government alone cannot fight corruption.
They must be supported by a judiciary that is
upright and transparent. It is very
demoralising to law enforcement officers when
they painstakingly investigate a case and the
culprit finds his way around the judiciary to
escape.
“Individually and collectively, we have to be
mentally restructured. We must change our
mind-set as a people. We must all return to
our core values of hard work, honesty,
integrity, justice, equity, fairness, humanity
and communality. In other words, we need to
go for more rearmament.
“We cannot continue to celebrate criminals,
who enrich themselves from our
commonwealth, and think that corruption will
disappear. Those who loot the public purse
must be seen and treated as undesirable in the
community, rather than celebrate them. They
should not be made to feel welcomed in our
families, religious bodies and societies. If a
person strips himself or herself of humanity
and dignity by stealing public or private funds,
we should not clothe them, respect or admire
them.”
“This is where many of our religious leaders
have to discriminate in favour of teaching the
scriptures and our cultural values. They
anoint criminals for their ill-gotten wealth,
and demonise the poor. We must show our
young people that there is dignity in labour
and reward in transparency and integrity.
Perhaps, this is one area where organisations
like DOHAL must continue to invest. We must
celebrate and promote our young people, who
exhibit traits of transparency, integrity,
honesty and accountability. This will
encourage others to emulate their examples.
“There is a need to make the youth an integral
part of the fight against corruption. Young
people are the greatest assets of any country.
They have the energy, the passion to act as
change agents if they are well nurtured and
included in the fight against corruption. The
added advantage of youth inclusion in the
anti-corruption process is that they have
technological tools that make transparency
and accountability easier.
“But I see hope and a great future ahead.
There are Nigerians of world-class standards,
characters, attributes and performance, if we’ll
only look deep. We should encourage them and
celebrate them wherever we may find them.”
“Corruption breeds poverty, crime, insecurity,
instability and generally inhibits growth and
development. It underdevelops and kills. I am
currently researching on the situation in the
north-eastern Nigeria for my thesis in
Christian Theology. And what I found is most
alarming.
“One of the reasons that members of the
extremist group, Boko Haram, gave for their
insurrection is that they became disillusioned,
when they saw how corrupt Western educated
leaders were. According to them, if those who
occupied government offices by virtue of their
Western education would corruptly enrich
themselves and deprive others of the basic
things of life, then that education is ‘haram’,
which means forbidden.
“I am told that when Mohammed Yusuf, the
original leader of Boko Haram and his early
followers first started, they all gathered and
tore their certificates, because they said a
certificate, which could not fetch them a
source of livelihood, is useless to them.
Similarly, they saw Western education as
corrupting the individuals.
“We may not agree with their position, but the
disappointment and disillusionment of citizens
over the inadequacy or poor performance of
their leaders is real. Adding rising corruption
to other inadequacies in leadership and we’ll
see the instability and insecurity, which we
have witnessed in the North-east in recent
years.”
Meanwhile, some chieftains of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) said the integrity
of President Muhammadu Buhari is now in
doubt following his failure to sack indicted
government officials in his administration.
Speaking in separate interviews with the
Punch, the chieftains called on the president
to sack the suspended secretary to the
government of the federation Babachir
Lawal, the suspended executive secretary of
the national health insurance scheme, Usman
Yusuf, and the suspended director-general of
the national intelligence agency, Ayo Oke, to
save his anti-graft war.

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