Chief Emeka Charles Kalu, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, has lamented recent stories of high level corruption and embezzlement under President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.
Speaking with journalists in Lagos, Kalu, the National Coordinator, Peoples Democratic Party Coalition (PDPC) cited the alleged corrupt practices of the suspended Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, and recent expose in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), saying the developments had brought a lot of embarrassment to the country.
Kalu, former governorship candidate in Abia State and Director-General, Global Initiative for Good Governance (GIGG), maintained that current political leaders had continued to steal people’s patrimony with unrepentant arrogance, thereby impoverishing the masses the most.
He stressed: “One laments the unrepentant arrogance with which our nation has been raped, bastardised and plundered. It has reached its crescendo of recent.
“Yet there is no sign that the Buhari/APC government has any tangible plans to tackle the putrid odour of corruption which they are enjoying, without any respite in sight.
“I am more ashamed that these stealing, plundering and embezzlement with reckless abandon have been coming from the administration of a man touted so much to be ‘Mr. Integrity’, and who had prided so much about the zeal to fight corruption.
“Years have gone now. Apart from hunting the opposition and relooting of every recovered loot, who among his cronies have been punished for corruption, let alone jailed?
“It is a situation of ‘turn by turn’ under the Buhari administration, a systematic redefinition of what we know as corruption.”
Kalu stressed that under the current administration, the nation had been witnessing the highest level of robbery through the pen, adding that there was nothing different between armed robbery and what had been obtained in government.
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According to him, since government officials had been stealing more than armed robbers, they too deserve long jail sentences like the robbers.
He stressed: “What we have now is official ‘Hushpuppism’ where the masses are the victims and I insist that if this administration wants to save its battered integrity, the NDDC man who gave himself palliatives of N1.4 billion should be made to render their account of stewardship to the nation.
“This is nothing but a ‘Hushpuppy’ arrangement and style of theft while they pretend to be serving the country.
“We need to do something now, otherwise, posterity will judge us all harshly. How could we be so wicked to squander money when the masses keep dying in abject poverty, worse being the condition of the people of the Niger Delta region on whose behalf the money they are looting were meant for.
“As for the Magu case, I really don’t believe that anything will come out of it because most top officials were also compromised and these are worrisome because you cannot jail just Magu without bringing down the entire culprits.
“This is no longer a government, but simply an avenue for personal aggrandisement. Nigeria is at the brim of collapse, if nothing is done before the eyes of the international world.
“We have so much lost our value that even Niger Republic is deporting Nigerians when our government is fighting so hard to secure free lands for them in the name of grazing. What a twist of fate?
“Buhari should prove critics wrong by bringing one of the thieves in his government to book and save us from this window dressing,” he said.
