Like Jonathan, Buhari has no political backbone — Odia Ofemium

In this interview with Vanguard, renowned poet, novelist and social critic, Odia Ofeimun expresses his worries about the new administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari, and suggests ways to move the country forward. Ofeimun also worked as private secretary to the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo before his death. Excerpts:

By Prisca Sam-Duru

Expectations?

President Muhammadu Buhari wishes to fight corruption, uphold national security and run an efficient government.

Let me be straight out with it: How successful he can get depends on how willing he is to move away from the Greek gifts he is being promised by our so called foreign friends who know but won’t tell that we have all these problems of corruption insecurity and inefficiency in government because Nigeria has not restructured in favour of a common morality for all Nigerians.

Only a restructured Nigeria can stand up to foreign wheelers and dealers. Restructuring is not only about North and South struggles. Although it is part of it. It is about national strategy and grand policy making. Let Muhammadu Buhari join Goodluck Jonathan in rejecting the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreement, EPA, and continue to reject foreign soldiers stamping on West African soil, and refuse the wayo Western solution to malaria scourge that Goodluck sidestepped to the annoyance of so called Western friends.

And then insist, as no Nigerian government has dared since SAP, on building proper factories to stop the influx of goods, essential commodities that glut our spaces. See who will offer to attend his next anniversary. And that will tell who Nigeria’s friends are.

Worries about Buhari’s administration

Odia Ofeimun

So, to make a clean breast of it, I have worries about, not expectations from, President Muhammadu Buhari. My worries stem from knowing what he must confront as other Nigerian Presidents before him and as he himself did in his first coming. Near certainty is that, one of these days, he will go to Davos as Mandela did and they will give him scientific reasons why he must stop being so passionate about a Freedom Charter or call it a development charter for his country. Davos wanted a Free South Africa without spine. Apartheid had given white children a special deal. But when Mandela had his time to do it for all South African children black and white, they showed him the beauty of market forces which can only now be justified by the trade imperialism over far and distant neighbours while fuelling xenophobia in those left behind.

I want to hope that President Buhari wont buy the hash which says that in an emergency, such as we are in, you must leave all control to market forces that are usually blind but controlled by identifiable levers.

The domestic component of such disavowal is to be gleaned from the body language of domestic allies who do not want to have anything to do with political restructuring or who are buying into a crude regionalism that is really another name for co-federalism.

The first thing to note, and quite a pity, is that like Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari has no serious political party. Just a rabble with ill – digested political slogans. So if he is determined he will have to learn to work truly outside the box.

Within the box, he will be fixed in the way that the pre – existing cabals fixed Goodluck Jonathan after mauling President Olusegun Obasanjo and leading him down the garden path until he thought he needed a third term to square up. Of course, there is no reason for the cabals to use the same old methods.

Remember that Goodluck tried to say that the cabals, not mentioning the market gurus from outside, were overpowering him. Well because his party had a short attention span and was all scatterdiagramatic in vision, he could not tackle the requisite levers. A heartily fractured ruling party collapsed into pressure as a matter of policy. As for Jonathan, he could not make his claims ring true in the face of an opposition within and outside his party determined to use every means possible to deny reality.

Now reality has just caught up with everybody. The demonstrators on the streets and the opinion leaders across the media who were suavely minding the turf for the cabals will need now to remove the wool from their eyes. Some of them without realizing it had turned fuel subsidy into an issue that it wasn’t.

So the point is how to have a genuine turnaround awareness capable of meeting real problems head on. I want to say that the problems can be met.

President Buhari has to be able to stand up and win respect for his sheer guts rather than let himself be overawed by undue pressure from so called friends abroad and allies at home who are merely thinking of clipping coupons. He needs to cultivate a grounding with ordinary Nigerians to withstand inevitable pressure. And by ordinary Nigerians, I mean the millions who need good health, genuine education, jobs, freedom of speech, movement and association. Already he has a Fulani problem which he can only solve if he forgets the cult of Arewa entitlements.

The question is, would he who belongs to everybody and nobody at the same time, find the skill and patience to do it right? Of course he would also have a Yoruba and an Ndigbo problem which he can only deflate by realizing that all ethnic groups want virtually the same things that the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of state policy prescribe.

Yes each ethnic group may wish only its own in to be in bounty. But the national mood since Awolowo’s successful campaigns for free education and other social welfare measures favours a system that covers all Nigerians.

Those who will say that the fall in oil revenue nullifies such precepts are not of this world as both the Bible and the Koran can be invoked to defend them.

Putting all children under fifteen at school ought to be made condition for any African state becoming a member of the African Union. It is the sure way for ethnic nationalities in geographical formation to be counted upon to rise above narrow nationality and become producers and resource controllers who see neighbours as co-workers.

Common welfare lays the basis for entrenching commonalities. To extend such to herdsmen is to put real capital behind old River Basin authorities and building proper ranches to stop the rampages across country.

On corruption and stealing

The reality is that you can’t build a country right or fight corruption and maintain security until you remove the lopsided structure that creates the basis for multiple moralities and hence violence.

Jonathan and Buhari

On this score, I agree with Goodluck Jonathan’s much derided quip that corruption is not just about stealing. Goodluck Jonathan got it right. His loud and learned assessors do not know what they are dealing with when they scoff at the distinction he made.

The shame of it is that the learned opinion leaders in our midst stand on straws once they get on a binge of partisan slogan mongering.

Now that elections are over, lets hope normalcy will intervene and allow all to try to define our terms properly. Otherwise it is self immolating to find oneself on the same side with so called progressives who, for instance, look for scientific reasons to disenfranchise a third of the registered voters and still talk about free and fair elections.

Absolutely retrogressive. Sad too to call them revolutionaries. Even with card readers and DNA technology, see the gory and fictitious election results that it yielded in Rivers, Kano, Delta, Katsina, Awka Ibom, Jigawa and Bauchi. It is a mess. Nigerians have had to accept the hogwash to avoid the Armageddon that some doomsday prophets had predicted. Come to think of it, the electoral officers who registered underage children in their large numbers! Shouldn’t they be taken to court to account? You see, this is why I say it is not about expectations but worries.

And, talking about reforming the electoral system, President Buhari needs to borrow a leaf from President Umaru Yar ‘Aadua whose sense of integrity required him to admit that the election that brought him to power was flawed. President Buhari should face it squarely.

- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/like-jonathan-buhari-has-no-political-backbone-odia-ofemium/#sthash.uL8hQpJN.dpuf

Buhari to fight graft with 5 special laws

President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to employ five proposed laws as his weapons in the fight against corruption, close associates of the President have disclosed.

Presidency sources disclosed that a committee of legends in law, led by the vice-president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo identified the five bills which have been passed on to the President for further scrutiny.

The President in turn is said to have requested legal advice on the five bills which include the Office of the Financial Ombudsman Bill 2015, National Convicts and Criminal Records Bill 2015, Electronics Transactions Bill 2015, Whistle Blower Protection Bill 2015 and the Nigerian International Financial Centre Bill 2015.

All five bills were among the 46 rushed through the Senate on June 3, the last day of sitting by the 7th Senate. Presidency sources, however, could not confirm if the presidency gave any prompting to the Senate on the bills that led to the controversial passage of the 46 bills in a space of 10 minutes.

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu nevertheless confirmed the presidency’s interest in the five bills but would not say more than that when contacted by Vanguard.

DINNER—President Muhammadu Buhari waves to other guests as he is recognized amongst other Heads of States at a dinner which took place, yesterday, at the International Conference Centre in Johannesburg South Africa during 25th AU Summit

However, normally reliable sources close to the President told Vanguard that the President has sought legal advice on the bills. The sources, however, would not say to what degree the Osinbajo-led committee of legends in law has gone on the issue, but it is expected that the committee would prod the President to give his assent to the bills.

Osinbajo has generally been expected to lead the administration’s efforts in justice sector reform and the identification of the five bills in the initial campaign against graft is believed to be in that direction.

Osinbajo leads law experts

“A Committee of legends in law led by Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) is putting finishing touches to a recommendation that will request President Muhammadu Buhari to assent to five of the 46 bills hurriedly passed by the 7th National Assembly at the point of its exit,” the normally reliable source now working with the president told Vanguard on the basis of anonymity.

The sources, however, could not confirm if the opinion have been delivered to the President who is expected back in the country today after a two-day visit to South Africa.

It is expected that the President’s assent to the bills would officially signal the administration’s expected fight against corruption.

Garba told Vanguard that President Buhari and his Vice had promised the nation in the course of their campaign that they would strengthen the country’s anti-graft laws. “If these bills are of help and I am convinced that they are, then expect some action in that direction,” he said.

The five weapons

The Whistle Blowers Protection Bill sponsored by former Senator Ganiyu Solomon “seeks to provide for the manner in which individuals may, in the public interest, disclose information that relates to unlawful or other illegal conduct or corrupt practices of others; to provide for the protection against victimisation of persons who make these disclosures.”

Senator Solomon first presented the bill to the House of Representatives where he served in 2007 but the bill did not get the expected legislative and executive endorsement until the concurrent passage by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The bill defines the nature of an impropriety that qualifies for disclosure, the procedure for disclosure and the protection that would be given a whistleblower by government agencies.

It aims to give some measure of protection to individuals who give out information on alleged malfeasances in government to security agencies.

The Electronic Transaction Bill, 2011 was sponsored by a former member of the House of Representatives, Uzoma Nkem-Abonta provides the legal framework for electronic transactions in the country. The bill especially becomes relevant for security agencies in the wake of increasing transition of the country from a cash-based economy towards a cashless economy facilitated by electronic channels.

The Electronic Transaction Bill, when signed by the president, is expected to facilitate e-government services and promote transparency in the transaction of government businesses, including procurement and sales of goods and services.

The Nigerian International Financial Centre Bill, aims to produce three separate agencies, namely, the Nigeria International Financial Centre Authority (administrative body); Nigeria Internal Financial Centre Regulatory Authority and the Nigeria International Financial Centre Judicial Authority.

The effect of the three agencies would be to position properly the country at the centre of global finance and as such attract international finance into the economy.

The Office of the Nigerian Financial Ombudsman, 2015 which was also passed by the Senate on June 3 seeks to establish the Office of the Nigerian Financial Ombudsman, as an independent body charged with the responsibility of resolving financial and related disputes in the Nigerian financial services sector.

The establishment of the Office of the Financial Ombudsman is also expected to lead to efficiency in dispute resolution in the financial services sector.

The Convicts and Criminal Records Bill, 2015 aims to among others ensure a proper documentation of convicts and criminals for the purpose of keeping a record of criminals in the country.

President must have political will— Agbakoba

On his part, a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Mr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, who highlighted ways the president could tackle corruption in the country said he (Buhari) must have the political will.

His words: “The first thing is to strengthen the anti-corruption agencies, he is also to make them independent and well-funded. He is to realign all the anti-corruption agencies into frameworks that can deliver. He would have to look at whether the EFCC, ICPC and Special Fraud Unit are not doing conflicting jobs. What is important is that first of all, he must have the political will, strengthen the anti-corruption agencies, he should also fund them. He should also give the anti-corruption agencies independence to go after anyone, who is found wanting without fear or favour.”

“We need new strong laws, the laws to tackle corruption now are weak, they are also duplicating and confusing and sometimes, the laws are wrong. So, sometimes, we need simple laws that will state who is a corrupt person.”

Continuing, the legal luminary added: “What is important is the political will, strong institutions, allow these institutions to work independently and finally, give them the money to work. Once you have these four things in place, it is very easy to fight corruption. But when you now have an agenda, then, there is a problem. For instance, if you want to go against corruption in the oil industry, if you are president, you must be prepared to allow whatever comes out of the probe to come. But if you want to hide anyone, then, there is a problem. These are the ways you can fight corruption.”

- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/buhari-to-fight-graft-with-5-special-laws/#sthash.FVIMiKhy.dpuf

I dont know why people are anxious for ministers – Buhari

president Muhammadu Buhari explained, yesterday, that he was yet to appoint his ministers because his predecessor’s transition committee submitted its report on the previous administration to him late.

Buhari, who spoke to newsmen at the Summit of the African Union in Johannesburg, South Africa, said he was being careful in order not to make mistakes in appointing individuals especially to key positions such as in the finance and petroleum ministries.

His words: “I don’t know why people are so anxious about ministers. But eventually we will have (them). But the main reason is that I have an interim committee which I agreed with the former President Jonathan that the ministers of the outgoing government should hand over their notes or their documents to this interim committee so that a position can be prepared for the new government to start from with clear records from ministers.

President Muhammadu Buhari

“But the ministers knew that they were going while the technocrats, the permanent secretaries and directors and so on, would remain. If anything goes wrong they would be invited to explain, but unfortunately the outgoing government did not cooperate.

“So, what the committee did was to divide itself into about five sub-committees and got a resource person that was willing to come and bring the document, and so they prepared and I got the report I think three days ago.

I’m not in a hurry to get ministers

“I was waiting for this report because I would like to know the position of things in the government especially in terms of finance and petroleum industry. So, I am not in a hurry to get ministers.

“I want to get ministers after at least I have seen the report because I don’t have to appoint a minister today and sack him the next week because this report would give me what actually happened in terms of security, and economy of the country.

“And since I have to have ministers from politicians and technocrats, I wouldn’t (like to) make the mistake of getting somebody, who has been involved on account of accountability.“

Buhari added that he, Jonathan and former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, had agreed to let the former ministers hand over their notes to the interim committee he had formed.

He said that the planned examination of the hand-over notes had to be suspended when the outgoing ruling party accused his then incoming administration of forming a parallel government.

Buhari said he actually wanted to get a platform from the former ministers on which to start from following the problem of accountability in the administration.

The President, who recalled that during his time as Minister of Petroleum during the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo military regime, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had only three accounts, said that during the immediate past administration, the NNPC and the Ministry of Finance did not know how many accounts they had. He described the development as improper.

On emergence of Saraki as Senate Presdent

He also said that the emergence of Sen. Abubakar Saraki as Senate President divided the All Progressives Congress (APC) in spite of the moves by the party to avert a crisis.

He said that the onus was on the National Assembly to resolve the issue as it had its own criteria for choosing its officers, which was why he did not want to interfere in the exercise.

Buhari said the problem of Boko Haram had been internationalised and expressed happiness with the support coming from Nigeria’s neighbours and the G7 in an effort to end insurgency.

- Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/i-dont-know-why-people-are-anxious-for-ministers-bahari/#sthash.zBlBAVKc.dpuf

Pakistan executes seven prisoners

Pakistan Tuesday hanged seven prisoners, bringing the total number put to death since executions resumed last December to 160, officials said. Seven executions took place in several cities in the central province of Punjab including Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sialkot and Bahawalpur.

All of those executed had been convicted of murder. Executions in Pakistan resumed in December, ending a six-year moratorium, after Taliban militants gunned down 154 people, most of them children, at a school in the restive northwest. Hangings were initially reinstated only for those convicted of terrorism offences, but in March they were extended to all capital offences.

The European Union, the United Nations and human rights campaigners have all urged Pakistan to reinstate the moratorium. Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted their appeals.

- Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/pakistan-executes-seven-prisoners/#sthash.dqzjrK43.dpuf

Buhari’s honeymoon may not last — Kukah

CATHOLIC Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Mathew Kukah in this interview expresses optimism that things will get better under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Beyond that hopefulness is a caveat that except the North responds positively to some indentified challenges in the country, the much sought national integration will remain elusive.

By Charles Kumolu

Were you inspired by President Buhari’s inaugural speech?

Nigerian presidents are not foremost for delivering good speeches. And I think President Buhari’s speech was quite a bit an improvement on what we are familiar with. Happily, it does not have a nine-point or ten-point agenda. Beyond the speech itself, it is important to appreciate the kind of narrative that brought him to power. A speech should set a tone about what a nation is to expect.

In fairness, the speech dealt with some of those issues. What has become famous is his expression that he is a president of everyone and belongs to nobody. At least, the strength of that statement is a great ambivalence. I think for me as a Nigerian, I am pretty hopeful. But for me as a Christian, I am waiting with bated breath.   I live in Northern Nigeria and I believe that 90 percent of the problems in terms of national integration will be solved by how the north responds to some of these issues.

How do you mean?

I made the point because a lot issues concerning national integration whether it is in the areas of the provisions of the constitution, are not clearly defined. And for me as a Christian I believe that living in Northern Nigeria, I still don’t get the sense that freedom of worship, expression that are   guaranteed in the Constitution are sufficiently protected and taken care of.

But I am very hopeful and I am impressed that President Buhari is the first Nigerian President to show impression that he is prepared to wrestle with that problem. And you don’t find that in his inaugural speech, rather you will find it in the speech he delivered to the Catholic Bishops Conference. He said things that had never been said before. And I hope that he will have the ability and capacity to deal with some of those issues.

The issues demand salient questions. For example, why is it that churches are treated with so much contempt and tolerated like nuisance in Northern Nigeria? Why is it they have become subject of attacks? Why is it that despite the provisions of the constitution, the right of worship is being frustrated in the North? I don’t think that there is a single governor in far Northern Nigeria that can proudly say that he has signed a certificate of occupancy allocating land to Christians to build churches? Most of the lands that Christians have are lands that were given by the colonial administrations. This is totally unacceptable. And Christians have to buy land to build churches.

*Bishop Kukah

For example as I am talking to you, I am waiting for a phone call in respect of the land we want to buy at Tsafe for the building of a church because our church was burnt down. This is not the first time, it was burnt down in 2011. We are relocating the church to another site for safety reasons. What I got from government for the burnt church cannot build a church. Right now, if I want to negotiate to buy a land, I cannot wear my suntan (pastoral regalia) because I will be told that I cannot buy the land.   And I cannot live in a country like this. This is totally unacceptable.

We buy land and build a church with little resources, but when a woman has an abortion in that locality, the first thing Muslim youths will do is to go and burn a church even if it is sited five kilometres away from the scene of the abortion.

There is no single governor in northern Nigeria except former Governor Makarfi of Kaduna, who commiserated with Christians when churches were burnt down.

For the first time in the history of our nation, President Buhari in his address to the Catholic bishops said very clearly that religion is not the business of government because most of the mosques in the north are built by government.   I have heard a governor who boasted that his administration built mosques more than any one before him. And the money was meant for the development.

Unless we find a platform of resolving those things, whatever Buhari may have said in his speech will not make sense. I don’t expect him to solve the problems in three or five years but we can at least put machinery in motion with enough honesty and sincerity.

Buhari cannot solve the problems of Nigeria, but he can point at the direction. I commend him and I am hopeful that we can begin to tackle those problems. That is why I said that unless Northern Nigeria sufficiently positions itself, we may not solve some of the problems.

What should be the priority of the administration?

It irritates me when such questions are asked. Why asking me what I think should be the priorities? If you are asking such question, you are asking for a 180 million answers. Buhari was not appointed, he was elected. If he was appointed, there could be element of surprise. What I am saying is that Buhari begged, cajoled and mobilised for our votes based certain clear principles that he articulated.

The man has given me a manifesto. My business is to study the manifesto as a means of judging whether Buhari is faithful to his promises. If you ask me now, I will tell you that Buhari’s priority should be to visit Sokoto. Let him come and have dinner with me and I will tell him the things I need him to do. But that is not the issue. Based on the commitment he made to us, it is not fair to ask Nigerians what they expect from this government because those issues have been articulated.

What do you make of this perception that Buhari is a Northern irredentist?

If the allegations against Buhari had enough bullets, he would have been shot down and his political ambition would have been killed.   People were able to move beyond those claims and voted for him. As far as I am concerned we need to resolve the issue of religion. I am convinced that as things stand now, I don’t see anybody in the horizon that has the capacity to deal with the issue of religion as it is manifested in Northern Nigeria than Buhari. He is best placed. He has got the moral reflex. From the point of view of his body language, track record and what all of us know he is the only person that I see that the ordinary Muslim in Nigeria can trust. I am not making an angel out of him but that is the fact.

Also, the modesty of his personal life in the last number of years shows that Buhari has the moral reflex to address the question of religion in Northern Nigeria.   From his speech, we found that his love for this country has never been in doubt. He admitted the mistakes of the past and having that honesty is important.

With all the noise being made that he is a religious fanatic, not one day was Buhari sited in a mosque. I am not sure he went to the mosque like Nicodemus at midnight.   Muslims don’t pray at midnight but it is a measure of how he saw his new role that he never went to address northern traditional rulers or group of people.

We need to give him all the support that he requires to achieve all the things that many of us are very passionate about.   We will never make any progress in this country as long as we continue to deny our common citizenship. I am seeing the prospects that things will be different in the next four years.

Watching Osinbajo seating with sheiks in the mosque was an indication that things will be different with time. That was against the notion then that if anything is happening in the mosque a Muslim political leader will represent the Federal Government while the Christian goes to the church. That is totally outrageous and opposed to citizenship. Again, there is no reason why the next ambassador to Saudi Arabia should not be a Christian and there is no reason why the next ambassador to the Vatican should not be a Muslim or anybody for that matter.

There is nothing to suggest that any Nigerian cannot be anywhere without religious consideration. If we don’t send that signal, the rest of the world will continue to treat us like a divided nation.   Any ambassador being posted to Washington today is not a small person and the ambassador of South Africa to Washington is a Muslim. The percentage of Muslims in South Africa is not significant but they wanted the best man for the job.

So, are Nigerians to demand more accountability from elected officials?

Accountability just like everything is not something that is given. It is not something that is on offer even between friends and families. It is something that you need to demand but not in a judgemental way. But it is something that you need to demand. That is why those who are good are crunching the numbers because when you hear about stolen billions, many of us cannot connect with the numbers. My late friend, Dr. Bala Usman used to tell me never to ignore these figures whenever I see them in the budget.

Is it true you asked President Buhari to forget about chasing the so called thieves and focus on governance, since corruption is so endemic in the country?

The text of my convocation lecture at Abakaliki did not contain such report. What does going after thieves in Nigeria mean? Between 1999 and 2007 how many governors passed the anti-corruption test? How many did we see on the EFCC list? How many convictions have been secured? So, if Nigerians want theatre and drama that is fine. But we are thinking about bread on the table. I am sure the lawyers in Nigeria will be very happy if Buhari says he is going after the criminals.

We can appreciate the fact that the success of these elections is not something that the lawyers like to celebrate especially the most senior of them. If Nigerians want him to prosecute the thieves, that is fine but Nigerians did not elect the President to prosecute thieves.

There are different ways of doing that. We elected a President not to look for scapegoats. We elected the President to get a job done and I am convinced that if Buhari wants to prosecute thieves he will do it because as the President there is no kind of information that he cannot access. Prosecution of corrupt people does not necessarily have to be done through theatre and drama. Obasanjo did it quite efficiently. He got back a lot of money without shouting. There were a few theatricals, but Obasanjo himself did say to my hearing that there were people who returned money even through pastors.   So what is the use of wasting money trying to prosecute somebody? Doing that quietly without noise will be better because the business of governance will go on.

The institutions responsible for prosecution should be made to do that effectively. All I am saying is that getting information about the transactions of corrupt people is easy. It does not have to be Buhari who will be championing it. The institutions are there. There are various arms of government that can point a moral gun at these people.

This is the only country where you can go to the Senate from the EFCC and become a minister even while having a case with the EFCC.   We are on a moral free fall. It is such that after some have been on the television their people will come out to say that their children are being witch-hunted.

I am not against prosecution, what I am saying is that the business of governance should not be abandoned. I said it during Oputa Panel (hearing) that the unfortunate thing about prosecution in Nigeria is that the criminals have the money to get the lawyers. Since these things can be resolved institutionally, why going on a wild goose chase? Nigerians don’t even have to know who the criminals are. Obasanjo, who has a very retentive memory, can tell Nigerians the people who brought back money without making noise.   He only told them to go and sin no more.

Only a foolish man will appreciate that going after the biggest thieves in Nigeria, is the biggest solution to our problems.

God has his way of getting things work. Given the enormity of the issues we are dealing with, creating distraction should not be encouraged because once that route is taken, there would be distraction. All I am saying is that Buhari has come to do a job and I think he was moderate about his expectations about corruption. We should understand that corruption is pretty well equipped in Nigeria. I am not saying that it should not be tackled, but if it must be done it is important to have the wisdom of David and Goliath. Corruption is everywhere in this country, it is in the judiciary, police, the church and everywhere. Indeed, it is the only thing that works.

The question we will ask ourselves is how other nations tackled corruption and I think we can actually come to a point where unearned wealth becomes unfashionable. These corrupt people are sick. There is nowhere in the world that people do the kind of things they do in Nigeria. It does not make sense that after stealing from your mother and father, the money will be taken outside the country. The morality of the stealing is another thing.

A lot of people who do all these don’t know anything about modernity. What is responsible for our crisis in Nigeria is the crisis of development. I hear some of these governors saying that they cannot develop in an environment of insecurity whereas it is their criminal activities that brought about insecurity. It is their inability to govern that brought insecurity.   That is why I consider dictatorship a far worst crime than colonialism. If Buhari is lucky it will take him six months before they start abusing him because he has to earn trust. I know the honeymoon is not going to last. But he should be supported to do the job.

- Soure: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/buharis-honeymoon-may-not-last-kukah/#sthash.LVUIonZC.dpuf