A human rights activist and founding president of One Love Foundation, Chief Dr Patrick Osagie Eholor has declared that, following the level of corrupt leaders in Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, President Tinubu must start showing seriousness in fight against corruption.
Eholor in a statement to Jungle Journalist Media Limited said the EFCC chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa who has been accused of bribery, and who has been selective about investigating corruption must be suspended and tried for corruption too.
He also argued that Hadi Sirika, immediate past Aviation Minister was too bold with his own corruption that he must be tried and jailed for criminality.
In his words, Eholor gave security agencies seven days to ensure that the duo were arrested and prosecuted and if found guilty, jailed. If they fail to, Eholor said, he would take them to court.
His words “I have always said Nigeria has become a comic book without an end. We have heard about the FBI, Scotland Yard Police, KGB, many international police organisations.
When they investigate you, they make sure that if you are found guilty of corruption, you go to jail. You are investigated. Recently, Donald Trump was investigated for tax evasion, and for molesting a woman.
He was convicted of it. But in Nigeria, you will see abundance of evidence against governors, against senators, against politicians and Ministers, and yet, nothing happens. If we have become a nation that go to the kitchen without freeing the smoke, we will remain a nation that celebrate criminals. You heard a story about the police, how an individual defrauded the highest security institution in the country, the police. And nothing happened.
Then you have an accountant general who stole a hundred and something billion ans he rewarded himself by marrying an underage girl. As we speak today, he is not in jail, he only returned N30 billion and nothing has been heard about it. We have the Ikoyi scandal where different world currencies running into billions were recovered. As we speak today, nothing has happened.
We heard about the NIMSAT. As we speak, nothing has been done. We heard about people using documents to defraud the Federal government of oil subsidy. Lots of them are still been investigated. As we speak, nothing has happened so far. EFCC and ICPC keep making money. We heard about the threats, how they want to investigate so many. As we speak today, nothing has been done and it doesn’t seem like there is any plan to do anything. All these are happening to the detriment of of the citizens.
We will not be surprised that a former DSP who is from Katsina built a whole village with our money, open fraud. He rented a plane with our money, painted it with our flag and our symbols and gave us a figure claiming that the plane was part of a fleet for our national career. He, the Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika took ₦138 billion just to rent a plane for one day! The serial number of the plane shows that it was taken on rent and still belongs to Ethiopian Airlines. I was able to expose this scam. As we speak today, the man is still not been Investigated, the man is not been prosecuted, the man is walking free with money taken from the coffers of the Federal government! If that happened in America, he will go to jail for 138 years, they will give him each count for each billion stolen.
He may even be given double of that jail term. We know what happens to such people in America, but in Nigeria, they walk free. What a country! If we are going to change this country, we have to be serious about deterrents. If anybody commits any crime, whether a sitting Governor, ex Governor, senator ex or sitting, anybody at all must pay the price by going to jail. If you have a law in any country and that law cannot punish offenders, that law is a joke. That’s why Nigeria is a comic book without an end. I hope that the present administration will disband the EFCC, the ICPC, because any money put there is wasted, and I hope they also look internally. Recently, a Governor accused the EFCC of taking bribe. I also published an opinion piece about the current EFCC chairman for going to Saudi Arabia with his family and staying in the best hotel, and spending an average of 15,000 dollars everyday. To this day, nobody has been bold enough to investigate the EFCC chairman or to tell him to step aside while he is replaced. If the head is rotten, the bottom is certainly rotten, that’s why today, bail is not free in any station. That’s why today, EFCC has become an organisation chasing after yahoo boys and taking them to PoS to empty their accounts, whether they are good or not. So, Abba Kyari, former head of the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) went into drugs and crime.
Today’s corruption phenomena can naver end until Nigeria faces it boldly and holistically, before it can be ended. Imagine a country where professors will be asked to supervise election and they become thieves and open day robbers and supporting crooked politicians to become heads of government or heads of parastatals. Nigeria is in trouble. We need to change the system, to purge the system. If we don’t do it, all the children growing up will aspire to become politicians, because the easiest way to making free money is becoming politicians. When you are a politician in Nigeria, you become an automatic thief, with the licence to defraud and destroy your country.
Our religious leaders are also not exempted. They are as criminal as the politicians and support them. And take stolen money to build large churches. Who does that?
We understand the roles of the lawyers in our society. They can defend the indefensible, murderers, criminals. That’s what they are paid to do. Some of them do it for money. But my problem is with the judges. If you become a judge, your integrity is supposed to come first. But unfortunately, 85 percent or more of the judges in Nigeria have become so money conscious that they don’t care about truth, they don’t care about facts, they don’t care about prima facie, they care about dollars and pound sterling.
The judges are also our problem in this country. The judiciary need to be straightened. Unfortunately, we have no institutions in Nigeria. Every institution have become man-managed institution. Until Nigeria becomes a nation with institutions, we are going to remain in this quagmire. Nobody is free from this. We all need to come together to the drawing table and ask ourselves if we still really want a country called Nigeria.
The way we are operating, where you can commit a murder and go free. It is not the way our forefathers who sacrificed and who died for this country designed it to be.
I am sure that our parents and ancestors who have passed on are rolling in their graves because every institution have compromised with the nonsense going on. Even the people selling in restaurants will buy amala and mix it with dangerous substance to prepare and sell, just to make more money.
Drug importers will import very poor quality drugs for people to buy and remain ill so they can make more money from drugs. Other ones will go to India and buy empty capsule and put sans or sawdust or powder and sell it as antibiotics. So every Nigerian is guilty, but the fault is from the leadership, it’s rotten and the body is facing serious decay.”
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