Tinubu urged to declare assets publicly

The AFRICMIL Coordinator, Dr. Chido Onumah, said on Wednesday in a statement that declaring his assets and making it public would place President Tinubu on a much higher moral pedestal than his predecessors who were not on record to have taken any significant action regarding this constitutional obligation.

“Besides the moral capital that accompanies such a rare gesture, Mr. Tinubu would be seen to have reinforced belief in the ‘Renewed Hope’ agenda on which his governance plan is anchored, and which was the mantra at every turn in his campaign trail.

“The anti-corruption agenda of the Tinubu administration remains vague even though in his inaugural speech President Tinubu said his administration would ‘take proactive steps such as championing a credit culture to discourage corruption while strengthening the effectiveness and efficiency of the various anti-corruption agencies’

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“AFRICMIL looks forward to a more detailed and unambiguous anti-corruption programme and is ready to work with the Tinubu administration to tame the vicious monster of corruption currently ravaging the country,” Onumah said.

He also said that before Nigerians get a full understanding of the new administration’s trajectory on fighting corruption, President Tinubu should know that an important tool for enhancing transparency and accountability and reducing corruption is whistleblowing.

He said, “We are disappointed at the failure of the immediate past government to enact a whistleblowing and whistleblower protection law, even though it introduced the whistleblowing policy as one of its anti-corruption strategies in December 2016 and approved a draft whistleblower protection bill in December 2022.

“To address this disabling lapse, we are using this opportunity to call on this administration to take steps to sign the whistleblowing and whistleblower protection bill into law without further delay.

“A whistleblowing law would boost the confidence of citizens to report fraud, block leakages and increase the revenue which the new administration badly needs to sustain effective governance at this time.”

He also urged former President Muhammadu Buhari to declare his assets and make it public as a token gesture of redemption for his severely diminished integrity.