The Acting Chairman of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, has urged Nigerians to
support the current administration in the fight against corruption and
engage in the fight like a jihad in order to free Nigeria from the grip
of the corrupt persons.
Magu said this on Sunday in a lecture he
delivered at the 7th convocation and 10th anniversary of the Fountain
University, Osogbo in Osun State.
Speaking at the convocation of the
university established by NASFAT, the EFCC boss, whose lecture was
delivered by his Chief of Staff, Mr. Olanipekun Olukoyede, said just 55
persons stole N1.3tn between 2006 and 2013.
This amount, Magu said, could fund
massive infrastructural development in many sectors and could train
almost 4,000 children from primary school to university with a budget
of N25m for each of them.
Magu said it was disheartening that
these few corrupt persons had turned round to wage war against the
commission and the administration using various means including the same
people they had impoverished.
The EFCC boss said Nigerians should not
leave the anti-corruption war to President Muhammadu Buhari,
Vice-President Yemi Osunbajo and the commission alone, saying every
Nigerian must support the anti-graft war with the aim of winning it.
He said, “This was why I said we owe it
to ourselves, it is a jihad for all of us to wage the war against
corruption. It is unpatriotic and a shirking of our responsibilities as
citizens to fold our arms and leave the fight against corruption to
President (Muhammadu) Buhari, Vice-President (Yemi) Osinbajo, the EFCC
and a handful of others. We are all stakeholders in the fight against
economic and financial crimes; together we can defeat this evil.
“Indeed, corruption could have killed
Nigeria if the rate at which corruption was festering then had not been
checked. Take for instance, the money stolen by just 55 people between
2006 and 2013 is well over N1.3tn. One third of this money, using the
World Bank rates and cost could have comfortably been used to construct
635.15 km of roads; built 183 schools; educate 3,974 children from
primary to tertiary education levels at N25.24m per child; built 20, 062
units of 2-bedroomed houses across the country and do even more.
“The cost of this grand theft therefore
is that, these roads, schools and houses will never be built and these
children will never have access to quality education because a few
rapacious individuals had cornered for themselves what would have helped
secure the lives of future generations, depriving them of quality
education and healthcare, among others.
“But the corrupt, using sponsored
people, claim that they are being prosecuted because of the region they
came from, the religion they profess, or their ethnic identity. They do
their utmost not to answer the all-important question of whether or not
they are guilty of the corruption allegations against them.”
Magu stated that the EFCC had recovered
N738bn in about two years due to the support of the President and the
commitment of the agency to stop corrupt officials from further plunging
the nation into underdevelopment.
He said the EFCC was oblivious of the
ethnic background or religious belief of corrupt persons when they were
being investigated, saying those playing up the ethnic cards were doing
so to whip up sentiments in order to go scot-free with their loots.
He, however, said that the EFCC would
not relent in its efforts to stop corruption in the country despite the
series of brutal attacks launched by the corrupt persons against him and
the commission.
But the Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf
Aregbesola, while addressing the gathering, said it would be extremely
difficult to tame corruption as long as the nation depended on “unearned
fund” from crude oil.
The governor said corruption was not
really the main problem of the nation but laziness, stressing that
Nigerians would be very vigilant and would stop corrupt persons from
stealing their money if the people worked hard to generate fund for the
government.
He said so many people did not know the process of extracting crude oil but they depended on proceeds from its sale.
He added that Lagos State with an
average internally generated revenue of N41.7bn per month, was the only
state that had weaned itself from the dependency on oil money.
Argbesola said, “Is corruption really
our main problem? We are largely lazy. To tame corruption in a
rent-seeking economy will be very difficult. I am not in anyway
antagonising Magu but what I am saying is that a society that depends on
rent can hardly eliminate corruption.”
He advised Nigerian youths to use the
insult hurled at Nigeria by the United States President, Donald Trump,
to spur them into serious work, critical thinking and innovation in
order to create jobs and make the country a better place to live in.
The outgoing Pro-Chancellor of the
university, Prof. Isaq Oloyede, who is also the Registrar of the Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board, said the university got 100 per cent
accreditation for all its programmes examined by the National
Universities Commission.
