Former governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, has frowned at the move by President Muhammadu Buhari to probe only the administration of the immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan, saying the searchlight should focus on all past Nigerian leaders.
Speaking yesterday Balarabe Musa, who is the national chairman of the deregistered Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), noted that the only way to eliminate corruption was to begin surgery and wound healing from where corruption actually started.
According to Musa, if President Buhari fails to go back to those long periods of years with a view to eradicating corruption and waste of national resources, it means the president has something to hide from Nigerians, and as such he may be grouped among corrupt leaders.
His words: “The right thing to do is to probe at least the administrations from 1966 when this level of corruption and criminal wasteful of resources started. It started with the 1966 coup when the military took over power. It is the military that brought about this level of corruption.”
“For President Buhari to say that he will only probe the immediate past civilian administration is definitely not consistent with the level of integrity associated with him. In fact, this statement warns Nigerians of a return of the 1980s episode of double standard, sacred cows, vindictiveness and even fascism, where civilian governors were clamped into jail for alleged corruption.”
He added, “first of all, it is expected of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption because he promised to fight corruption and eradicate corruption in Nigeria. He knows very well that concentrating the probe on former President Jonathan administration alone will not lead to effective fight against corruption and elimination of corruption. If he continues with this limited objective, he will end up being grouped with the corrupt leaders.”
“It does not matter whether they are dead or not, let the record be there that such administration was probed by him. Yes, they are already dead, but why not say the fact because we are talking of eradicating corruption from the system in Nigeria. This does not allow a time limit, particularly when the people who partook in this level of corruption during the period, 1966 till today, are still with us and are still in key positions of government, and they still have influence in government. Some of them are even responsible for sponsoring political parties like the PDP and even the APC.”
“Why is he excluding them from the probe? If you remember during the 1980 to 1984, there was this hypocrisy of dealing with only the political leaders, as a result of which all those who occupied political office in a civilian government were assumed to have enriched themselves and they were arrested and locked for two years and above on the assumption that only politicians brought about economic misfortune of the country.”
“But immediate military administrators were part of this, everybody now knows the result. So this statement by President Buhari means that we are returning to the position of double standard, sacred cows, vindictive administration and policies.”
“We know that all the Presidents in Nigeria from the beginning of the Second Republic up till today have been alleged to have been involved in corruption. It is quite obvious because they are found to be some of the richest Africans. So, I don’t see any honest reason for excluding any administration from 1966 to date. No credible explanation from excluding them, except if the sitting President is afraid of something.”
