A new book on the 2015 General Elections titled “The Nigerian General Election of 2015,” has ex-rayed the anti-corruption fight of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The book written by a number of frontline researchers and political analysts contributing to the book said Buhari led a team of unrepentant unbelievers in his anti-corruption crusade, while explaining the problem with Buhari’s anti-corruption syllabus and the failure of his administration to meet people’s aspiration and yearning, noting that even if Buhari had selected the anti-corruption crusade as the programme for four years, he could not have been able to complete the task.
The book also identified three main challenges with Buhari’s anti-graft crusade, first citing the pervasiveness of corruption in the Nigerian public space and the failure of the Nigerian public to recognise various forms of corruption in the country.”
It explained the depth of the social ill that had undermined the country’s human development index in the last five decades, noting that corruption “has engulfed all facets of public life such that Buhari, the focal anti-graft crusader is a deviant, who is not even sure that his closet associate is with him.”
The book, also, observed that the citizens “has not been sufficiently socialized to recognise various forms of corruption, although experience shows that, given the opportunity, a large percentage of them would be corrupted. The critical ingredient of patriotism is lacking.”
It equally pointed out that Buhari “is leading a team of unrepentant unbelievers in a crusade. A senator once complained that he could identify many criminal senators whose files he had treated when he was in the Nigeria Police.
“It is just logical that no institution can be better than the people that make it up. The reality of the Nigerian situation is that it is dangerous to trust politics to politicians because they are the problem that causes the problems in the first place.”
“Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade is almost a battle led by a general without troops or at best with potential deserters. A large part of the Nigerian population cannot understand the implications of looting the public treasury; otherwise, there would have been public outcry against some people still in high places dictating the shots.
“Unfortunately, the same public is in search of quick change to the economy. The crusade should not just be a government project, but a citizen project. If this present exercise fails, then corruption would have been indirectly written into the Nigerian Constitution,” it said.