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Noah Ebije, Kaduna
An elder statesman and Acting Chairman, Northern Elders’ Forum, (NEF), Professor Ango Abdullahi, has regretted that President Muhammadu Buhari is not fighting corruption in the country considering the fact, “we have now seen corruption on a massive scale, and nobody is doing anything about it”.
Fielding questions from journalists on Tuesday in Kaduna shortly after the opening ceremony of a public lecture entitled “Education as an instrument for national integration: The Northern Nigerian Crisis”, professor Ango Abdullahi who is a former Vice Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, said if President Buhari was committed to fighting corruption, the nation’s courts and prisons would have been congested with corrupt politicians.
He said many corrupt politicians are going about freely because APC has forgiven their sins, pointing out that the case that readily came to mind is that of Senator Danjuma Goje whose ‘sin’ was allegedly forgiven by APC.
He said,: “The President said he is fighting corruption, but I don’t believe him because, in the sense that, if he is fighting corruption, our courts and prisons should be full by now. This is because corruption is everywhere.
“You don’t just pick one case and make it a universal example of fighting corruption. We have just seen the conviction of Orji Uzor Kalu and it is becoming something that the world should know, when there are so many people with seventy something billion with them. Those people should be in the same prison with Uzor Kalu.
“And in any case, if you want to say that, Uzor Kalu had committed an offence, but here is a national chairman of a party, the President’s party who pronounces that, don’t worry how much you have stolen somewhere else, as long as you come and say you are a member of APC, you are forgiven. A good example of that, is former Governor Danjuma Goje. It was the Attorney General of the Federation himself that went to court to say, they were withdrawing the case from the court. And his offences are not different from Orji Uzor Kalu’s and many others that were reported.
“The media is equally guilty in this direction. You journalists are part of the crises that we have, because you are not addressing these issues as hard, objectively and fairly”.
The NEF leader also spoke on restructuring, saying, “If we are going going to restructure Nigeria, we must abandon the presidential system of government. If you want Nigeria to function as it use to function in 1960 at the point of independence, we should go and reconsider retention of the presidential system of government, because it is inefficient, it is corrupt and there is no accountability.
“Under the parliamentary system of government, you cannot be a minister untill you are elected from your village. So, you are already accountable to your electorate and then, the leader of your party who happens to be be President or Prime Minister would make a nomination, which means other members must approve; if you are not a good man, from there you have failed.”
