Mr Buhari campaigned for office in 2014 promising to fight corruption headlong.
President Muhammadu Buhari, while campaigning for office in 2014, promised to tackle corruption headlong and bring it to its knees.
On assumption of office in 2015, Mr Buhari’s regime took up the fight against corruption in Nigeria’s public sector to the applause of his many Nigerians. Top military brass, including the then immediate-past Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh, were also put on trial over alleged mismanagement of military funds, which hitherto, were never subjected to scrutiny by civil authorities.
While the raids reverberated across Nigeria, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, justified the action. In July 2017, Mr Buhari earned the endorsement of the African Union to lead the fight against corruption on the continent.But it did not take too long before public confidence in the administration’s anti-corruption war began to wane, with top administration officials becoming entangled in corruption allegations without any prompt and decisive response from the president.
Mr Goje’s prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was at its tail-end when Mr Malami terminated it. He would later justify it in an interview with this newspaper last January that his action was in furtherance of “overriding public interest.” Messrs Nyame and Dariye’s convictions in May and June, 2018, bolstered the government’s avowal to defeat corruption, especially amongst politically exposed persons . The pair’s trial had lingered for over a decade before a novel legislation – Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 – quickened their trial and eventual conviction.
In an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Sagay, a law professor and chair, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption , said the action was a political decision collectively taken by the Council of State. His public perception as an anti-graft czar from his past as a retired army general seemed to keep sharp practices at bay but only for a little while.
In another instance, the parliament queried 558 MDAs for refusing to account for N969 billion “intangible assets” in the 2019 budget. Mr Idris and other co-defendants are being prosecuted over alleged corrupt diversion of N109 billion from public treasury. However, public corruption perception in Nigeria deteriorated between 2016 and 2017, a report by Transparency International showed.
The results show a slight deterioration in perception of corruption in public administration in Nigeria compared to 2016.With the one-point reduction in the score, Nigeria slipped in the country-ranking by 12 positions, from 136 in 2016 to 148 in 2017. The rankings are from 1 to 180, with 180 indicating the country having the worst perception of corruption.
It was Nigeria’s second consecutive year of a downward spiral on the TI’s CPI ranking, the country’s score having dropped from 26 in 2019 to 25 in the 2020 assessment, and further to 24 in the 2021 record. Similarly, EFCC’s chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, recently said Mr Buhari’s anti-corruption drive was topnotch.
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