Christopher Kolade, former chairman of the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), has revealed that the initiative under former president, Goodluck Jonathan, was clouded by “politics and eventual lack of credibility”.
The former Nigerian high commissioner to the United Kingdom also lauded President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership over the last 100 days, saying he has done well in office, but he alone cannot fight corruption.
“If you destroy the foundation on which you’re setting up something like that (SURE-P), if you say that credibility is the key to success in this thing and then you undermine credibility, by politicizing the issues, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot and I am not very good at shooting myself in the foot,” he said on View from the Top, aired by Channels Television.
Assessing the president’s 100 days in office, Kolade said that Nigerians must support the president if his war against corruption must succeed.
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“Part of the handicaps that we have embraced is that we build on expectations. If expectations are going to be fulfilled, then all of the parameters for building up the expectations must be in place,” he said.
“In other words, if the president says he is going to fight corruption, then the necessary weapons to do this must be in place. How is he going to do this? He has at his beck and call. A civil service which has been in existence for some time, when the corruption that he is going to fight was taking place, that public service was there. Is he going to use the same public service to fight the corruption? Something has to change.
“He also has us, the people on the outside. We are not in government, we are not in public service, but many of us are participants of corruptions. If we didn’t make demands on leaders that are outside on what they should do, they probably wouldn’t do them.”
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He added that Nigerians themselves must change the way things are done, for the country to experience the change the country voted for.
“Fighting corruption is not a one-man battle. It first has to make sure that we ourselves are willing to make the change. So these days, when people talk to me about President Buhari’s first 100 days, I ask myself, we prayed for change, change was a platform, we thought change meant the leaders must change, public service must change, how about ourselves, have we changed?
“In assessing a hundred days, I would do so not just on what the president has done but also on what we have willingly done to support the change we were willing for. I don’t think we’ve done enough. Many of us are still doing exactly what we did before.
“He has the responsibility of leading, articulating where he wants us to go, and I think he has done well on that. He has told us what he wants us to do.”
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The veteran broadcaster is also the pro-chancellor and chairman, governing council of Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos.
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