Former Presidential Candidate of the defunct All Peoples Party (APP) and Alliance for Democracy (AD), and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief Olu Falae has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign is going out of hand.
In an interview with Vanguard, he explained that he participated in the $2.1 billion arms loot because Chief Tony Anenih promised him that former President Goodluck Jonathan will restructure Nigeria if reelected.
On Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade, Falae said “It is going out of hand. They know that there is no charge they can bring against me. That’s why smear campaign is used as a substitute so that, over time, people will say I am a bad man . I read some articles in the paper that say the anti-graft war is increasingly becoming controversial. It is truly becoming controversial because it is no longer reasonable, it is beginning to look selective. How could you link me with Dasuki? The person I have not seen for more than 20 years. The man I had no dealing with whatsoever.
“It is important to clean Nigeria up. When we were launching our party, SDP, in Abuja, in 2014, the title of my speech was; Nigeria must kill corruption so that corruption does not kill Nigeria. I have been an anti-corruption campaigner all my life; so I support anti-corruption campaign but it should be conducted within the confines of the law and should be fair.”
He vehemently insisted that because the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has no evidence to charge him, that is why they have engaged in a smear campaign in the media.
He said “That may have given them some impression in certain quarters that I have the potential to galvanize Yoruba and those who don’t want Yoruba unity can now see whether they can smear me, linking me with Dansuki fairly or unfairly and Yoruba people are very critical; once they hear you are linked with a dirty person, they will be the first to condemn you .
“This is what is going on. So it is a possible hypothesis, one has no fact, but it does make sense that anyone who doesn’t want Yoruba to come together may be doing this to discourage the Yoruba from seeing me as a possible rally ground.”