MURIC rates Buhari as ‘the best since independence’

The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) says the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is the best since Nigeria got independence in 1960. 

In a statement on Tuesday, Ishaq Akintola, MURIC’s director, said corruption has been a major problem and it is only Buhari’s government that has tackled it decisively. 

Akintola said Buhari has been fighting corruption since 1983 when he had a stint as a military head of state. 

“We adjudge the Buhari administration as the best in post-independence Nigeria. Everyone agrees that corruption is the bane of Nigeria’s development. All other factors are peripheral but corruption is tangential. This implies that Nigeria will overcome all its challenges once corruption has been reduced to its barest minimum,” the statement read. 

“This explains why President Muhammadu Buhari has been consistently consistent in tackling graft since his days as military head of state (1983-85) till today. Apart from the War Against Indiscipline (WAI), the period heralded transparency, probity and accountability in the public sphere. 

“Unfortunately corrupt elements in society have also been fighting tooth and nail to frustrate his efforts. These include, but are not limited to, rapaciously greedy civil servants, a superfluously voracious business class and avariciously glutinous politicians.

“They were behind the 1985 coup which ousted the no-nonsense Buhari-Idiagbon regime. That coup was an anti-people action sponsored by established kleptomaniacs and executed by greedy, corrupt and overambitious elements in the military. That singular action also returned Nigeria to the path of unbridled waste, reckless graft and undiluted consumerism.

“Unfortunately the second coming of President Buhari in 2015 as a civilian president was almost castrated as the National Assembly was hijacked from the very beginning courtesy of ‘sarakitisation’ and ‘dogaratisation’ of parliamentary process. The president himself nearly lost his life.”

The group said notwithstanding the setback, Nigeria is currently witnessing the most massive infrastructural development ever experienced since independence. 

Roads, modern rail system which, according to the group have been abandoned, are now getting attention.

The group also hailed the president for implementing the treasury single account (TSA) which has “helped to block financial leakages”. 

Adjudging Buhari’s government as being transparent, the group said the government helped clear accumulated arrears of workers salaries and pensions running into billions of naira, and also ensured that Biafran veterans were paid off. 

The group added that although Boko Haram insurgents scored direct hits with heavy casualties in Kano and Abuja before 2015, it has been most effectively confined to the north-east since that period.