Presidency: Buhari Won’t be Cowed by Resistance to Anti-corruption War

By Omololu Ogunmade in Abuja

The Presidency said at the weekend that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari would not be cowed by mounting resistance against its anti-graft war.

Speaking at a radio Programme tagged: “Hannu Da Yawa” on FRCN Kaduna, the president’s spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu, said Buhari would fight the war against corruption to the end.

According to him, the President’s commitment to uproot corruption as one of the cardinal policies of his election campaign is non-negotiable.

“Let me say one thing. Those whose illicit ways of accumulating money have been stopped will criticise this government but all that will not derail the unfaltering commitment of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to the war against corruption.

“He is aware that this was one of the main reasons why Nigerians in their millions put their trust in him – the main reason they voted him into power in 2015. To keep that trust of ordinary Nigerians who voted him into the office, he has vowed to give corruption a good fight. He will not let them down,” Shehu stated.

Garba said though the war had been tough so far, Nigeria would never slide back to the dark days of the past when corruption was a norm. He insisted that though corruption had been fighting back, the war would continue non-stop.

“Corruption has been fighting back vehemently, finding accomplices in various forms and guises. Nevertheless, the Buhari administration will not relent. Nothing will return our country to those sad, old days of wanton thievery that have plunged us into the economic mess from which Nigeria is currently recovering. The war against corruption in Nigeria is one of those clashes between good and evil, where good is determined to triumph,” he added.

He dismissed insinuations of selective war against corruption by the administration, arguing that it is not true  that members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are treated as sacred cows. Instead, he said all were equal before the law.

He highlighted various measures which he said the administration had introduced to promote transparency by the present administration, disclosing that the National Hajj Commission, for instance, carried out an audit of accommodation agents in both Makkah and Madina in Saudi Arabia following the president’s directive.

He said the output of the directive helped to save $16.7 million in a year.

“Each Hajj pilgrim is being saved between 600 to 1,000 Saudi Riyals, which is about N60,000-N100,000 from accommodation, money that had lined the pockets of agents in the past.  This year, houses are being rented directly from owners,” he said.

He commended citizens for embracing what he described as the whistleblower policy by “taking extraordinary risks to expose corruption.”

On the ongoing rehabilitation of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja and the consequent relocation of flight services to Kaduna for six weeks beginning from March 8, Garba said the government and people of Kaduna should strive to sustain the socio-economic benefits of directing fights to Kaduna.

“The government of Nigeria has done a big thing for Kaduna. You must show appreciation to this by supporting the administration,” he added.

Also speaking on cash releases of over N1 trillion for capital projects in the 2016 budget,” Garba described the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, as the first works minister “to ride on all the federal roads across the nation.”

He said in addition to the roads, other projects that are of immense priority to the president are the Mambila power project, the Lagos-Kano, Lagos-Calabar and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri railway modernisation projects and the new Presidential Initiative on Fertilizer.