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This question is hypothetical because there has never been an anti-corruption war by the APC-led Muhammadu Buhari administration. What we have had, and which still is, is a camouflage, a ruse, and a deceit foisted on an unsuspecting, unreflective, and unimaginative populace that has swallowed what is best described as the mother of all deceits hook-line-and-sinker. Buhari, his goons, and cabals have played the Josef Goebbels and Adolf Hitler on gullible Nigerians: They have woven a tissue of lies and coated it with some truth and have thrust it down the throat of Nigerians. A few corrupt elements have been apprehended and these have been showcased to mean that a holistic war against corruption was afoot; in the real sense, however, only the political opponents of the Buhari administration, made up mainly of members of the opposition PDP and other sundry enemies of the administration and its leading lights, have been so apprehended. In most of the instances in this one-sided “war” against corruption, there are no facts to nail those so arrested since their arrest is majorly a witch-hunt; so they are kept in detention indefinitely with their case moving at snail’s speed or not moving at all.
We have also seen that any corrupt person who defects into the APC is automatically discharged and acquitted of all corruption charges by the anti-corruption agencies. They become white as wool and clean and clear as snow. They not only walk free and tall, they also become regular faces on the corridors of power and in the circles of the high and mighty. More than this, they are given important assignments by the ruling party and they begin to hug the limelight again. People who should bury their heads in shame and people who should be cooling their heels in goal are thus allowed to escape justice; they are given protection and are allowed to offend our sensibilities. This way, we are told that corruption and malfeasance pay and it is a crime to be upright. In this government, too, are many corrupt elements; rather than prosecute them, the government shields them. Some have been probed and indicted by their state government – state they bled dry while they superintended its affairs – but the Buhari presidency condones them; shields them; protects them; and has even had the temerity to “sit” in judgment over them and declare them “not guilty”! The EFCC and ICPC have not been allowed to investigate, not to talk of charging, these common felons top court. They continue to occupy high office; live a life of opulence at the tax-payers’ expense; and rub it in our eyes as they gallivant all over the places with sirens blaring before and behind them; and they are addressed as “Your Excellency” before our very eyes! Your Excellency, the thief!
Buhari cannot fight corruption because he is the product of corruption. The APC primary that produced him was procured by money-bags. The APC ticket was virtually sold and bought. The highest bidder carted it home and handed it over to its preferred candidate. The 2015 election that Buhari was said to have won, apart from being heavily rigged on all sides, was also corruption personified. Some independent international reports said ex-President Goodluck Jonathan and his party spent in the region of N1.2 trillion in that election while the APC spent in the region of N800billion to N1.0 trillion. We have been regaled with how some of the PDP election money came about with the probe of the Sambo Dasuki arms bazaar but we are yet to be told how the APC funded its own election. Buhari confessed he did not even have the money to pay for the declaration of interest form and had to approach a bank for a loan; so, how did he fund a keenly-contested primary election and the 2015 presidential election that, together, reportedly gulped over a trillion Naira? Who were his financiers and where did they get the funds from? The general belief is that the funds spent on both sides of the PDP and APC divides in the 2015 election was slush funds – in other words, public funds stolen by our leaders and diverted into funding the elections. So if a man got into office this way, how can he have the temerity to fight corruption? The best he can do is what the Buhari administration has done – limit the fight to members of the opposition while the thieves inside are protected from prosecution. That is a witch-hunt. It is oppressing, suppressing, and repressing the opposition; not fighting corruption.
These apart, since it got into power the Buhari administration has had its own embarrassing moments with corruption allegations against top administration officials – all of which allegations have been swept under the carpet. Like Jonathan, Buhari has had his own fair share of Stella Oduah, Deizani, Abba Moro, to mention but a few. We have had Buratai and his Dubai properties; BR Fashola, Kayode Fayemi, and Rotimi Amaechi, with damning disclosures by their respective state governments. We have had the DSS indictment of Ibrahim Magu, the EFCC boss himself; and a serving senator’s sizzling allegations against the IGP. The First Lady herself has indicted the cabals around her husband’s government; she was the first to alert the nation about the mind-boggling corruption in the Presidential Initiative for the North-East before the “grass-cutting” scandal involving the suspended SGF broke. Recently, the same Aisha and a daughter of the president, Zahra, indicted the Aso Villa clinic and the State House bureaucrats of superintending a bottomless pit. A pattern has emerged: Once you are in the good books of this administration and are well connected to any of the cabal factions, you will get away with blue murder. I will, therefore, not be surprised if the latest addition to the growing list of the Buhari administration’s complicity and duplicity on the issue of corruption, Abdulrasheed Maina, goes away scot-free. By the way, what happened to the woman permanent secretary who ought to have retired but was reportedly kept in office against Civil Service regulations by the president?
But thank goodness, the eyes of some of the blind men parroting ‘Sai Baba” are already opening; men like Femi Falana and Itse Sagay. Like these men have now realised with the Maina case, there are accessories after the fact of corruption in this administration – they are many and are also highly placed. They are so sure of their onions, hence their impunity as demonstrated, again, in the Maina case. They are so powerful that, again and again, they have dared the president to act. He has not ventured to – not even once. Instead, he runs after soft spots like Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB, Niger Delta miscreants, and hate speech on social media! Pity!
