ANTI-CORRUPTION WAR: We can’t follow rule of law – APC

Amid criticisms of the Federal Gov­ernment’s extra­judicial approach to its war against graft in the country, the ruling All Pro­gressives Congress (APC) has declared that President Muhammadu Buhari will not adhere to the rule of law in bringing suspects to book.

The party asserted that subscribing to due process in the prosecution of the anti-corruption crusade will not yield the desired results.

According to the APC, “the so-called observance of rule of law has left Nigeria in a situation where corruption has thrived and because loot­ers of the treasury can simply go to court and obtain an in­junction in the name of rule of law, the polity has been messed up.”

In an interaction with some journalists on Wednes­day in Abuja, the APC Deputy National Chairman (South), Mr. Segun Oni, ruled out the possibility of the government adhering to the rule of law in the raging fight against cor­ruption.

Oni argued that the APC could end up achieving noth­ing like other administra­tions in the name of respect­ing the rule of law, adding that if the “rule of law is left to be what it is in the case of fight­ing corruption, nothing will be achieved and people will continue to plunge the coun­try into more economic crisis.

“If the rule of law is left to be what it is and nothing is happening, if you leave this war in the hands of peo­ple who would not be able to prosecute it, it means we give up and God forbid that we should fail. People are talk­ing about the rule of law and so on; how much have we achieved by the rule of law?

Are they saying there is no corruption? If there is corrup­tion, what has been done to stop it? Or we should now say we cannot stop it and there­fore we should institutional­ise it? At one stage, there must be a stop.

“During Jerry Rawlings’s tenure in Ghana, he applied a measure; God forbid that in Nigeria, we should leave things until people get so frus­trated. Things cannot contin­ue the way they are; every­body knows corrupt people, but everybody is keeping his/her voice low. Don’t lawyers know corrupt judges? Don’t judges also know corrupt lawyers? If the system within the judiciary is unable to deal with this, so nobody should talk?” he said.

Oni continued: “If the sit­uation is not checked, people would get so frustrated to the point of coming out in arms against the whole system and God forbid. So, what we are trying to do now is to prevent the alternative, which is the collapse of the whole system. If the National Judicial Coun­cil (NJC) had been able to deal with the issue of corruption decisively to earn the confi­dence of Nigerians, I am sure this approach would probably not be necessary.

“I want to see how Nige­rian judges or Nigerian law­yers or Nigerian practition­ers of anything can raise their hands and say, there is no cor­ruption. Nobody has defend­ed the system so far, even the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) has not defended the system to say there is no corruption. What people are talking about is how we are going about it. Let them come up with alter­native ways of achieving that. Once they tell us, ‘Mr. Pres­ident, you don’t have to do what you are doing, we as­sure you, we will fish out all corrupt people in the system within six months, give us this time’; then there would be no need for any extra measures,” Oni declared.

He said that it was only APC members who lost out in the party’s affairs that are meeting for alignment with rumours of formation of a political party, adding that the ruling party would wish them good luck in their endeavours.

Courts will decide Dasuki’s fate

Meanwhile, the Presiden­cy has said that only a com­petent court can decide if former National Security Ad­viser (NSA), Col Sambo Das­uki (rtd) stole $2.2 billion vot­ed for arms by the immediate past President Goodluck Jon­athan.

In a statement released late Tuesday, the Presidency urged Jonathan, who on Monday ab­solved Dasuki of stealing such money, to allow the courts to decide the fate of the ex-NSA.

During a debate on youth entrepreneurship at the Ox­ford Union Society in Eng­land, Jonathan, who defended his administration’s policies, said that Dasuki couldn’t have stolen a whopping $2.2 billion.

But the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesi­na, said that Jonathan’s com­ments were sub-judicial be­cause the matter was already before courts of competent ju­risdiction.