A presidential aspirant, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim has stated that the scourge of corruption was better fought during the era of President Olusegun Obasanjo than under the current Federal Government led by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Disclosing that while the former government had an Inspector-General of Police from the same zone as Obasanjo publicly handcuffed for graft, under Buhari, government officials indicted for corruption are given clearance.
The founding member of the Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN, stated this during an interaction with newsmen in Abuja, pointing out that people took Obasanjo seriously because he was straightforward in the fight against corruption.
His words, “Nigeria during Obasanjo’s administration made more progress in the fight against corruption than I have seen in this present administration. EFCC, ICPC were created, but this APC government has not been able to appoint substantive chairmen for those agencies. Assuming that they have to create those agencies, would they have been able to achieve that?
“It was during Obasanjo that a serving minister was put on trial; it was under that government that the Inspector General of Police was handcuffed and dragged by policemen under him on national television. That IGP happened to have come from the same zone with the then sitting president. What do you have now? It is clearance for officers indicted for corruption.
“We need to get serious and not reduce this thing to a joke; it is good to punish those who break the law. Why they took Obasanjo seriously in his anti-corruption fight was because he was straight forward. People said it was political witch-hunt but no AD member was sent to prison. No single ANPP member was sent to prison. People that were sent to prison were PDP members. Under Obasanjo two serving governors were impeached and put on trial.”
Olawepo-Hashim stated that a survey conducted by his campaign team as at four months ago, indicated that only five per cent of voters in Lagos state want Buhari as president, adding that majority of those polled said they want a fresh candidate to emerge as Nigeria’s president.
His words, “We did an opinion poll in some South West states and the Middle Belt and we are still compiling that of the North West and North East. The result was then if elections were to hold that time, only 5 per cent of the electorate in Lagos would vote Buhari and less than three per cent would vote Atiku. Majority of the respondents said they never wanted any of these. They are looking for a new credible candidate.”
The presidential hopeful went on to state that incidents of corruption are rife in the country as a result of Nigeria’s centralised system, which sees everybody coming to the federal capital to get things done, even those issues that can be handled at the sub-national level.
His words, “Any system where you have monopoly offering one service or the other, there will be corruption. Look at the transformation in the communication industry… People who want to fight corruption cannot at the same time be promoting a centralised system, because a centralised system by its nature encourages corruption.
“If every Nigerian businessman or woman has to go to a certain person in Abuja and they have to wait three to four years for one person to sign a document before that document can be passed, then it is difficult to expunge corruption from that system.”
