President Buhari’s integrity no longer sellable – Gov. Fayose

The Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has said Buhari is presiding over the most corrupt government in the history of Nigeria and protecting looters of the country’s commonwealth.

He said Nigerians had seen through his deceit and would no longer buy the “fake image of integrity they were trying to sell.”

Citing the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which indicated that corruption had become more endemic in Nigeria than it was in the last 16 years, Fayose said any honourable government would have stopped using its fight against corruption as its major achievement.

He stated that the released names of people that were still on trial as looters was a cover-up for the government’s failure.

He argued that the first list of alleged looters released by the government was politically motivated while the second one was an afterthought that was done to cover the shame of the government because Nigerians questioned the first list.

Fayose, in a statement on Monday by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, reiterated that Nigerians were more interested in their welfare, security of their lives and physical development of the country than tales of concocted lists of corrupt Nigerians, who were only corrupt in the estimation of the government because they did not belong to the ruling All Progressives Congress.

He said, “The Peoples Democratic Party never pretended to Nigerians that it had corrupt people in its fold and the party never protected them. Today, the party has gone ahead to offload the corrupt elements to the APC and they were not only accepted gladly into the party, they were given prominent appointments by the President.

“For any list of alleged looters to be credible, the President, who is protecting looters, should be number one while those looters in his government should follow.

“His nomination form was bought with proceeds of corruption and those who bought the form and financed his election were paid back with the return of all their seized property, ministerial appointments and even disappearance of prosecution witnesses in the EFCC cases.”

According to Fayose, a government that reinstated and promoted a former chairman of Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform, Abdullahi Maina, who was declared wanted for corrupt practices by the International Police Organisation and dismissed in 2013 for alleged N2.1bn pension fraud and used the APC broom to sweep the $25bn contracts scam in the NNPC under the carpet is nothing but a government of plunderers “and that is the clear definition of Buhari’s government.”

He added, “It was in this same government that the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, suspended the National Health Insurance Scheme Executive Secretary, Professor Usman Yusuf, for alleged corruption and the President recalled him even without the knowledge of the Minister.

“Up till today, nothing has happened to the probe panel on the alleged N500m bribery said to have been paid to the President’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, by officials of the MTN to influence government to discontinue its hard stance on the $5bn fine imposed on the company.

“Therefore, no matter how hard they try now, they can no longer hoodwink Nigerians with their deceit of fight against corruption.

“Even an APC Senator, Shehu Sani, once said that the President used insecticide to fight corruption involving his perceived political opponents, but used deodorant when it affected his own men.”