Corruption
has pervaded every sector of the economy and the level of corruption has
reached an alarming level and it keeps increasing, but it seems nothing is
being done to arrest the situation, it got to a stage that some felt the anti
corruption agencies are only used to harass those not in the good books of the
government in power, what is your feeling about this?
I have been on the receiving end of this corruption issue, I
would have said I am not the best to talk about it, but I am the best to talk
about corruption in Nigeria. The greatest problems Nigeria has are not with the
leaders, but also the followership, we are all guilty on this issue.
Our system encourages, enhances and celebrates corruption, the
media, politicians and their followers, and those that hold public office. If
you gave somebody N1 billion, why should it not be used for the purpose for
which the money was meant? Take for example when I headed the police equipment
fund committee, some people asked me why I wanted to buy 1,000 vehicles for N5
billion for the police, they insisted that rather than do that the money should
be shared, but because I refused they went to the media to make noise, I knew
why I wanted to give them (police) as much as that number of vehicles, but if I
had shared the money with them and didn’t buy those vehicles, the police would
have been deprived as they have not gotten that number of vehicles since then.
All the allegations made against me then were not true, the
court also confirmed it, no N300 billion was raised, only N8 billion was
raised, but because of the kind of leaders we have in this country,
politicians, traditional and various sort of leaning, who insisted they must
share the money, that I should not use it for what is meant for, they queried
why should the police be given so much. They queried why we should build such
decent houses for the police that they don’t live in those kinds of houses.
Why I am saying this is that when you talk about corruption, it
is not enough to keep shouting corruption. The issue is you and me, and the
leaders we have, so we should blame ourselves.
The issues lies with politicians and their followers, who will
harass a person with genuine intention to serve to go and bring money before he
or she is voted for, the politician will be forced to go and borrow money, and
when a politician does that, he will look for means of recouping his money when
he gets to public office.
Corruption cannot be tackled until there is national
reorientation and rebirth. I think this corruption issue also requires
solution.
Corruption is not even the issue, the major issue is
selfishness, people are complaining about President Goodluck Jonathan, what has
he done that they say they want to hang him? What has other good leaders done
that they say they should hang them? Is it that there should not be good men in
Nigeria? Why is it that we want to pull down every leader and we say every
leader is bad? When our mind is preconditioned to say we want the worst of the
people that is what we get. Let us give good people a chance, let us encourage
people with sterling quality to lead the country. Let us encourage such people
and vote for them, the day we vote in true leader because of the qualities they
posses and not by inducement, then we have started the fight against
corruption.
Democracy is the answer to corruption. Voting in the right people,
who goes into office and do the right thing, is.
I give this challenge to journalists that whenever they see an
innocent person being hounded, they should be bold enough to investigate him
and know if what he is being punished for is true or false. Let me tell you, no
good person wants to participate in politics, they prefer to remain in their
profession than go into politics, they feel they will be destroyed. Why should
we destroy our leaders? Tackling corruption requires collective effort. We need
God’ assistance and we need to believe in ourselves and choose the best people
to go into positions of authority.
How have you resolved the case
with the EFCC on the police equipment fund?
Nothing has happened. There is no case. That is why I am
speaking now. We have relationship with the police, the Inspector General of
Police, we are doing things for the police, we have people from the police,
they have apologised on behalf of the leadership that caused all these
problems. Even those leaders that caused the problem they have come back to
start relating with us, they used to be our friends; we are even the best of
friends now.
I want to say hope is not lost in this country, though, I don’t
want to mention the person’s name, but among those who have been Inspector
General of Police in this country, and he is the most highly respected, he
called me and told me that initially they did not understand what I was doing,
he said when he was in the service he knew police funding comes from government
through the budget to police, and the idea of private funding of police did not
occur to him, and they didn’t understand it, so they were misled, and
unfortunately they followed the advice of those who misguided them, and they
practically almost destroyed the legacy that they and those coming behind would
have enjoyed.
He then charged me to help the present IG to bring back the
private funding initiative and bring back those that collaborated with us. I
assured him I will do that. I have received so much pressure from a lot of
people. It is a national duty.
One of our trustees, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, ever before he became
PDP chairman, called me and asked me what was my problem, that in his case he
was jailed for doing nothing, and his sin was that he did his best for Gongola
State and his country when he was governor of the state.
It is a national duty and I can’t give up. It is a duty to human
race. Since we left this project two years ago, see what has been happening,
criminality, kidnapping, the police can’t just do anything about it, where are
the vehicles, where are the tracers, how can they monitor all these crimes,
they can’t, because they can’t get the funding. In all the places we went to,
we found out that 50 to 60 percent of the successful police force are funded by
the private sector.
Since we left, we discovered that all the IGs that came on board
went to all those international stakeholders, but they have a problem with all
those international stakeholders, their embassies, their government, the
corporate donors knew of the foundation, they gave us the support and they saw
the corruption that was used to stall the foundation, they then insist that
without the foundation they can’t help the police, we are willing and ready, we
have 166 million Nigerians that we have to consider, I am happy that we came
out of the crisis with our reputation intact. The current security situation
has justified our position and shows the selfishness, the greed.
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