Buhari’s anti-corruption war ‘is the silliest joke in Nigeria’s history’

Farooq Kperogi, an associate professor at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, US, says President Muhammadu Buhari’s fight against corruption is unjust, selective and lacks transparency.

He described it as the “silliest joke in Nigeria’s entire history.”

In an interview with PUNCH, Kperogi accused Buhari of using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to arrest and jail his political opponents without giving them benefit of doubt.

He noted that Buhari’s administration has two judicial standards for fighting corruption.

“Is there any anti-corruption crusade? As I said many times, Buhari’s so-called anti-corruption fight is the most invidiously selective, the least transparent, the most brazenly unjust, and the silliest joke in Nigeria’s entire history. Here is a man who doesn’t give his corrupt political opponents the benefit of the doubt,” Kperogi said.

“He orders their arrest, jails them, and uses the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to smear them in the media on the basis of allegations, but tells astonishingly bald-faced and easily falsifiable lies to defend, deflect, minimise, and excuse the corruption of his close aides and political associates. You call that anti-corruption crusade? Please!

“It’s a perfect, poignant metaphor to encapsulate the scorn-worthy lies, deceit, double standard, and crying unjustness of the Buhari administration’s so-called anti-corruption fight. In Buhari’s Nigeria, there are two judicial standards for fighting corruption.

“The first standard is that the president’s opponents are always guilty until proven innocent – and they can never be proven innocent. They are always already condemned by the mere fact of being the president’s opponents. The second standard is that the president’s corrupt aides and associates are always innocent –until they are ‘cleared’ by the president who has now reduced himself to the pathetic position of the ‘Clearer-in-Chief of Executhief Corruption.’

He said Buhari was never a man of integrity and it was Nigeria’s desperate need of hero “that caused us to dress him in borrowed robes.”

“What man of integrity would have a multi-million naira house in Abuja but lied that he had modest houses only in Daura, Kaduna, and Kano? What man of integrity would be afraid to publicly and transparently declare his assets after promising to do so? What man of integrity chooses to be the sole signatory to his presidential campaign bank account to which millions of poor, struggling Nigerians donated tens of millions of naira and not give an account of how he spent the money,” the professor queried.

“People who are intimate with President Buhari told me several months ago in the heat of my unrestrained enthusiasm over his emergence as president that he was morally and temperamentally unsuited to fight corruption.”

Kperogi added that Buhari’s war against corruption was already lost before it started, saying: “If I were him, I would just call off the charade and apologise to Nigerians for taking them for a ride.”