Buhari not doing enough fighting corruption – Odekunle

A member of the Presi- dential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Femi Odekunle, has accused the President Muhammadu Buhari administration of not doing enough in its ongoing anti-graft war.
Odekunle expressed regret that President Buhari had been hampered in his fight against corruption by democracy and the rule of law. This situation, he said, had given the room to corrupt persons to continue to get away with the crime and even fight back.
According to the professor of Criminology, “President Buhari is not doing enough. He has allowed democracy and rule of law to tie his hands and if he (Buhari) is not careful, he would spend his remaining years fighting corruption and corruption will come back with full force.”
Odekunle said this on a radio programme monitored by our correspondent in Osogbo, Osun State.
The former chief of staff to Lt. General Oladipo Diya (rtd), an ex-chief of defence staff, however, recommended the setting up of a presidential task force by the Federal Government to collect reports from Nigerians who have information on the beneficiaries of corrupt practices.
Odekunle, who also argued that the fight against corruption was not selective, as being alleged in some quarters, said that some special advisers and other powerful people in the Presidency might have been preventing some evidence and information against some corruption suspects from getting to President Buhari’s table.
“I have called the attention of the President to the need for establishing a task force but it has not yielded any result. But some powerful people may be moving against this, because anybody can be culpable.
“Left to me, this fight against corruption should not be restricted to the last four years. It should go beyond it. It should start from 1986, because some people have stolen so much money.
“But because of the delay tactics of some senior lawyers who have been intimidating judges and sabotaging the national interest, because of their selfish interest, we have not gone far in prosecuting corruption suspects,” he said.
Prof. Odekunle who was said to have, in the past, referred to some Senior Advocates of Nigeria as “Silly Advocates of Nigeria”, alleged that some senior lawyers had been bribing judges with dollars, while some former judges had been hired to peddle influence among sitting judges handling corruption cases.
“We have spent one year and we have only prosecuted two or three agencies out of about 500 Federal Government agencies, ministries and parastatals, 36 state governments and 774 local government councils,” the retired university don said.
He noted that most professionals and captain of industries in Nigeria had collaborated with corrupt persons, describing them as potential suspects.