President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been admonished to brace up with every available weapon at his disposal to tackle the high level of corruption ravaging the country.
A former governorship candidate in Lagos State on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), Owolabi Salis, who gave the advice, noted that corruption is the greatest problem that has confronted the nation since independence, slowing down the progress of the country and visiting untold hardship on the citizens.
“Corruption, as of today, has ballooned into a notorious and hydra-headed monster which should be engaged with a devastating iron fist, rather than treating it with kid gloves. You need to fight it dirty and silly.
“For many years, Ghana wallowed in a terrible economic crisis not because there were no qualified technocrats to manage the economy but simply because of endemic and systemic large-scale corruption at that time. It was when Jerry Rawlings got there and gave corruption a good fight that Ghana began to change for the better,” Salis said in a statement.
According to him, the highly-respected Obafemi Awolowo would not have been able to provide free and compulsory education in the old Western Region, which other regions couldn’t provide, if his government was corrupt, neither would it have been possible for his party, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), to implement the free education programme in the states controlled by it if corruption had been predominant.
“Moreover, Awolowo, as Minister of Finance, was able to manage the war-time economy without borrowing a kobo from external sources because corruption was at most very minimal at that period.
“This should be a big lesson to the current administration that no matter the expertise of its team members, it will only be labouring in vain if it doesn’t give the demon of corruption a good fight. And this is also the reason, no matter how much the government borrows from external sources, it will ultimately amount to futility in the face of the rapacious hawks in government eagerly waiting to grab as much as they could into their private vault.
“This is why in our own clime here in Nigeria, news of public appointments are always received with wild joy and celebrations. It is not seen as an opportunity to serve but rather as a ticket to loot the treasury clean and empty, unlike in the civilised climes of Europe and America where such appointments are received as a patriotic call to service,” the United States-based lawyer added. Salis, who lamented the high level of looting in the country, therefore, urged Tinubu to ensure that anybody who steals does not go scot free.
