By Yekini Nabena, Ag. National Publicity Secretary, APC.
Under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, the scale of recoveries from corrupt elements in the past three years by the country’s anti-graft agencies is testament that the administration’s extensive anticorruption drive is yielding results.
Compared to the past, successful prosecution of many corrupt persons, the hugely-successful whistle-blowing policy and voluntary return of corruptly-acquired funds and assets has shown that it is no longer business as usual and corruption is increasingly becoming unacceptable.
Corruption can no longer define how we do things as a country. There is a new realization among well-meaning Nigerians that if we don’t kill corruption it will kill us.
Recently, the media space has been awash with a campaign of calumny against the anticorruption efforts by the same opposition partisans and their proxies that ruined the country with their institutionalized corruption. This is expected as corruption will naturally fight back.
Ahead of 2019
Sadly, these thieves have resurfaced to canvass votes of Nigerians for various elective positions, ostensibly to resume their stealing. Nigerians are neither gullible nor stupid. They have not forgotten the yoke they bore under the corrupt Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) regimes and deserve no more of it.
Public funds that could have improved the education, healthcare sectors and provided infrastructure to develop the economic and social life of Nigerians are sadly in the pockets of these thieves.
While we alert Nigerians to the plot of some politicians to buy votes and deploy other illegal means to subvert the people’s will during coming elections, we urge relevant agencies to be proactively involved in tracking of election financing. The same people who criminally-diverted public monies to fund their political activities as brazenly displayed during past administrations, must be prevented from doing same in coming elections.
To conclude, we share the submission of a former United States Vice President, Joe Biden: “Corruption is a cancer; a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity… it wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs”.
We must continue to challenge corruption and its related vices. This is line with the Change Agenda the APC promised Nigerians. This is a promise we are committed to keep.