President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has recovered looted funds in excess of N800bn and recorded over 1,400 convictions, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated this at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
He warned the opposition against misinterpreting corruption allegations as a sign that the administration’s anti-corruption war is waning, saying “anyone who disagrees that the anti-corruption fight is alive and well is free to dare us”.
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He described the call by the People’s Democratic Party for Buhari’s resignation as infantile”.
“The fight against corruption, a cardinal programme of this administration, is alive and well.
“President Muhammadu Buhari, the African Union’s anti-corruption champion, who also has an impeccable reputation globally, remains the driver of the fight and no one, not the least the PDP under whose watch Nigeria was looted dry, can taint his image or reverse the gains of the fight” he said.
He said the corruption allegations against the Niger Delta Development Commission and the National Social Insurance Trust Fund as well as the ongoing probe of the former acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, had revealed that the “administration is not ready to sweep any allegation of corruption under the carpet; that there is no sacred cow in this fight.
He said Buhari’s government would not cover up for anyone, “including the members of our party and government, who faces corruption allegations as the fight against corruption is blind to party affiliation, position in government and any other consideration.
The minister said if Magu could be investigated, the fight against corruption could not be deemed to be fake and neither could it be said to be waning.
He said the allegations of corruption in NDDC were not new, noting that “what is new is the speed and seriousness with which the administration is tackling the allegations.”
He added that the ICPC’s Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Group, is aimed at tracking performance of publicly-funded projects, and also the Commission’s escalation of the use of administrative sanctions in the public service by periodically submitting, for sanction, names of public servants who are being prosecuted.
