ABUJA- President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday, announced that prosecution of corrupt officials of former President Goodluck Jonathan regime and other individuals found to have stolen national resources would begin in a matter of weeks.
This is apparently in line with the president’s earlier promise to break the vicious cycle of corruption, unemployment and insecurity in Nigeria and that his administration would not only ensure that stolen monies stashed in foreign bank accounts were returned but that the looters must be put on trial.
Speaking at a meeting with members of the National Peace Committee led by the former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar in the Presidential Villa, President Buhari declared that he was gathering documents which would serve as evidence against suspected culprits in the anti-corruption war.
The President regretted the sorry state of affairs in the country’s financial system and told the Committee that as part of its actions to redress the national problems he had inherited, Nigeria’s revenue generating institutions were being reorganized.
Part of the efforts, he further told the visitors, was the presidential directive to that a single treasury account be established for all Federal revenues to ensure greater probity, transparency and accountability in the collection, disbursement and utilisation of national funds.
“We have really degenerated as a country; our national institutions, including the military, which did wonderfully on foreign missions in the past, have been compromised; but we are doing something about it; the military is now retraining and morale has been resuscitated.
As Petroleum Minister under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo in the 1970s, I could not travel abroad until I had taken a memo to the Federal Executive Council asking for estacode. Now, everybody does what he wants.
That is why security-wise and economically, we’re in trouble,” President Buhari bemoaned, adding that those who have stolen the national wealth “will be in court in a matter of weeks and Nigerians will know those who have short-changed them.”
The peace committee which metamorphosed into National Peace Council, NPC, by the order of the president however urged the Federal Government to be guided by the rule of law in its fight against corruption.
