Spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to focus on progressing the economy rather than campaigning for the anti-corruption crusade because he was not elected as chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes commission.
In an interview with Vanguard, Metuh said “Our President was not elected as the Chairman of the EFCC, he was not elected to be the Chairman of ICPC. There are bodies in this country saddled with the responsibility of fighting corruption and he should empower and fund them and pay equal attention to progressing the economy.”
He also noted that the looted fund doesn’t belong to the All Progressives Congress or the President.
He said “We have our wide network and we have incontrovertible evidence to that effect but it is not a question of you are corrupt or I am corrupt, the money we talk about is not the wealth of the President, it does not belong to the APC, it belongs to all Nigerians.
“PDP is a responsible party, we have interest in ensuring that the people who engage in corrupt practices get prosecuted and, where evidence is available, get convicted even if we have to confiscate their assets. We want those people to punished but what we do not want is selective application of the war against corruption whereby it turns into witch-hunt.
“Up till now, we do not know the kind of evidence they have but what we know is that everyday in the media, you will see 6billion dollars stolen by former ministers, 7trillion there. What we are saying is: ‘do your investigations and prosecute them’.
“The law states that everyone is innocent until the contrary is proved. When you now say people are guilty and you call them thieves without evidence to show, you are doing a major damage to them, their families and to the whole economy.
“You are demarketing our economy because you are making foreigners and investors to actually believe that we are a corrupt country. Prosecute those ones that are corrupt but let this issue of corruption not become a witch-hunt and let it not become a distraction.”