Why Buhari must fight corruption

Need for Mr. President to ignore those trying to distract him from wagging war on graft.

On the fictionally derived blackmail that Nigerians voted for “change” and not for “anti-corruption”, an irritating clamour has arisen from a rabble of interest groups for President Muhammadu Buhari to ignore corruption and concentrate rather on delivering “change”! Instructively, many of these loudmouths simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge Buhari as a hero and embrace him as President.

Needless to say, they will neither recognise the fact that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s political career has turned out to be an astonishing success story nor be inclined to concede that the All Progressives Congress, APC, has ended up proving all the pundits wrong.

Thus embittered, we now find them cobbling together even the most indefensible basis for defending the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and waging war on an anti-corruption fight that has barely even started!

With some commentators going so far as to justify the corruption of the Jonathan years on the argument that massive corruption was equally witnessed in preceding administrations, their position effectively amounts to the construction of an edifice for lavishly accommodating corruption while purporting to be calling for change! This pedestrian stance ridiculously amounts to calling on Buhari to provide a solution to a problem without addressing the problem in need of that solution!

The fundamental problem with Nigeria is obviously the embrace of corruption as a cultural norm and indeed, its cultivation into our national ethos through the years. There is nothing Nigerians complain about today without roots in the unbridled corruption President Buhari has brilliantly pointed out will kill us if we do not kill it.

The argument that he should not fall into the “distraction” of fighting corruption and focus rather on the “changes” he can bring about, misses the point entirely. It is ignoring corruption that would actually amount to the new government being distracted from bringing about change, thereby falling into a craftily contrived trap the enemies of this nation have diabolically sprung for it.

Releasing the nation from the stranglehold of corruption is actually the first and foremost change in direction the country desperately needs and as a matter of fact there is absolutely no meaningful change that can ever be effected in Nigeria with the stronghold of corruption solidly blocking the way forward.

How will the APC discourage present and future corruption if we do not probe into past corruption? Against the background of depleted national earnings, how might we mobilize funds to deliver the dividends of democracy if we do not mop up that which has been stolen from our common patrimony?

When Nigerians voted for change, they clearly also and indeed primarily voted for an unrelenting assault on graft. No change will come to Nigeria unless we tackle those who looted our country to the ground and ensure they pay dearly for the impunity with which they mindlessly stole from the rest of us.

President Buhari’s mandate is to bring about change and to do so by first and foremost, fighting corruption. Anyone telling our President otherwise is his, and, our worst enemy, determined to ensure his administration fails even before it has a chance to succeed.