Buhari should start corruption fight from his constituency, APC

ANGLICAN Archbishop of Enugu Ecclesiastical Province, Emmanuel Chukwuma, has, in his characteristic manner, dropped some steaming sub­missions on national developments. Among other issues, he berated Alhaji Maitama Sule for praising the president so early in his administration, describ­ing it as sycophantic and hypocritical.
What is your assessment of Presi­dent Buhari’s performance since he assumed office?

I would say that for President Bu­hari, the usual 100 days assessment would be a different ball game because 100 days used to be a time whereby you begin to assess the performance of key public office holders. But for this dispensation, it is not the time to assess any goodness or success because of the quantum of spoil in the past adminis­tration. So, these 100 days should be a time we should be looking at the per­son in government – what type of redi­rection is he trying to make, where are we heading to as a country, what type of recovery is being made and what kind of agenda does he have?
So, for now, it is like he is still plan­ning an agenda for his administration. That is how I see things now. It seems to me that the quantum of spoil has made the present administration not to be in a hurry. I think they are trying to see to what extent they can recover sto­len funds. I understand that the Presi­dent has been having series of meeting with the Permanent Secretaries to get ample clue on the right direction to take in making major policy moves.
Are you saying that you are com­fortable with the President’s delay in forming his cabinet?
I must tell you that the ministers, sometimes, are the ones that breed cor­ruption – even commissioners – as is the case with states. Most of them are the ones that negotiate with fraudulent people on how to find a way to steal public funds. All the corruption that we heard about during former President Jonathan’s era, unfortunately, was be­cause many of his ministers were cor­rupt, and they grossly misled him by the proposals that they always submit­ted, hence a lot of monies were carted away. The permanent secretaries are not also out of the game, as we have been witnessing from what the present administration has been exposing. But with the code of conduct that Mr. Presi­dent is putting in place now, if any min­ister comes, he cannot tell him lies. So, like I said earlier, I see the first 100 days of Buhari’s administration as a time of setting an agenda, a time of recovery, a time of assessing what is on the ground to be able to know what steps to take. We have to wait until the National As­sembly is also stable and the federal cabinet is formed to set the govern­ment in full motion. That is when we can start looking at areas of assess­ment. I would say that the government has been in the processes of recovery, redirection and reconstruction. And on that note, I would say that the present administration has not done too badly, so far, because you do not have to be in a hurry while reconstructing what had been spoilt. You also have to be careful about the type of individual to hire for the reconstruction to forestall further damages.
Many people have criticised the President for making lopsided ap­pointments, with the South-east cry­ing wolf over alleged neglect. Would you say that the South-east lacks people that are credible enough to meet up with the qualities that Presi­dent Buhari is looking for?
That is not the issue. The issue is that I would advise the South-east not to cry yet. They were talking about the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), which was hitherto occupied by a South-easterner in the immediate past administration, but that didn’t happen. But there are still sever­al other appointments, including minis­ters, to be made. So, in as much as I do not subscribe to anything like northern agenda in the current administration, I do not also think that the South-east should start crying much now. I have seen everything and my take is that even those South-east people that were in positions of authority before, what did they do for their people? That is my dilemma!
So, I do not think that anything is wrong yet. Like I said, the immediate-past SGF was from South-east and you ask: What exactly did he do for the South-east? What tangible thing? You see what I am talking about? And those who occupied other positions, what did they do for their people? Apart from few Senators who did a lot for their Senatorial Zones, many of them disap­pointed their people.
Are you referring to the roads in the South East?
The South-east roads are a disaster! I have said it severally and it is a big shame. People were in charge of it and they were all South-east indigenes. Both the immediate-past Senate Com­mittee Chairman on Works and the House Committee Chairman on Works were both from the South-east zone. But what did they do? The Chairman of FERMA was also from that zone but the federal roads in the South-east are the worst in the entire country, as we speak. So, for me, I do not think that the South-east should begin to cry now. They should rather blame their past representatives and make sure that those that have questionable charac­ters are not allowed to represent them in any capacity again. We should also remember that President Buhari once said that those that gave him the least votes at the polls would get the least attention from him. So, rather than cry­ing, we should approach him, appeal to him and make him understand the need to equally carry all sections of the country along in the scheme of things.
So, I seize this opportunity to draw the attention of Mr. President to the South-east roads. The Enugu-Onitsha and Enugu-Port Harcourt roads must be given urgent attention because those that handled them before deceived us. If you enter Onitsha from the bridge­head, you would think that the roads are smooth down to Enugu. But it is a deceit and I urge the President to ex­tend his probe to contracts that were awarded for road construction or re­habilitation, especially as regards the federal roads in the South-east. Many of the ministers and federal officers who were involved in those projects deceived us. Let Nigerians know what happened to all the monies that were earmarked for road projects in the South-east.
Talking about probe, many Ni­gerians recently came hard on the Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto Dio­cese, Matthew Kukah, for allegedly urging President Buhari to shun se­lective probing as well as turning his corruption war into media exercise. What is your view on that and Bu­hari’s style of fighting the menace?
Probing should be all-inclusive. I do not believe that our dear president should start with probing those from other parties first because it is said that charity begins at home. Mr. President must realise that even his election was sponsored by corrupt money – stolen public funds – and that is very impor­tant. He must remember that, and that is where he should have started the probing exercise. It is unacceptable and questionable to target the probe mostly at perceived opposition mem­bers. I am against such selective probe. That is also a form of corruption. So, it is a matter of starting from your immediate constituency. He should start from them so that when he now pounces on other people in the oppo­sition, nobody will talk. But when he targets other people and feigns igno­rance that those with him and around him are also corrupt; then it becomes unreasonably selective and unfair. And that way, everything still becomes cor­ruption.
Recently, prominent northern leader, Maitama Sule, stated that he had been praying for God to grant Nigeria a leader that would lead and not loot the nation’s treasury, and pointed out that he was pleased to have seen such qualities in President Buhari. Do you also see him as such?
It is too early to draw any conclu­sion on assessment of any government now because many leaders start well and end badly. What I would say is that end justifies the means. We are talking about fighting corruption, but corrup­tion is not our only problem. There are other battles that we need to fight and it is too early to judge. When the govern­ment stabilises and begins to progress, we would be able to assess its perfor­mance, the people around him and how he drives his administration. So, it is hypocritical for anybody to start saying that Buhari is a leader and not a looter so early in the day. I don’t believe in that. Most times, we are very much sy­cophantic and I would advise that such sycophancy should not come up now. We must be apostles of truth and advo­cates of sincerity and honesty of pur­pose in governance. For now, nobody can really say where we are going. We are in a state of uncertainty for now. How can you begin to say that some­body is a leader when the economy is still awful, security poor and youth un­employment still at the highest point? It is sycophantic.
You earlier alluded to a state­ment where the President allegedly said that he would first attend to the zones that gave him the highest votes before considering others, which he seems to be acting out not; should that be the case in the 21st century democracy?
It should not be the case, but do you blame him? We foolishly followed our brother, Jonathan, and where did we land? I repeat that we foolishly fol­lowed our brother during the elections and that is why we are where we are today. We should learn the hard lesson that modern politics should not be a matter of sentiment and tribalism but rather a matter of who can perform for Nigeria. Having said that, I have to remind President Buhari that he should maintain what he said at his inauguration that he is for everybody and not for anybody. That means that he is for Nigeria and not for the North or South. He should not allow the al­leged northern agenda practice to have a place in his administration because it will create bad blood. By the time the ministers, ambassadors and all are appointed and they are dominated by the north, then we can talk But right now, we can count the Governor of the Central Bank, The Inspector and the General of Police, managing director of the NNPC as those from the South-south that are holding key positions in Buhari’s administration, and the South-south cannot claim that they voted for the President at the polls. So, we can say that it is only the South-east that seems to have been forgotten.
But I am quite sure that President Buhari knows that South-east is very important to his government, and I am certain that he knows what to do to give the zone its rightful place.
Are you one of those who do not care if key appointments are lop­sided provided the right people are appointed?
Let me make myself clear; I am not saying that there should be lopsided­ness. The thing there is that we should look at who and who can work with Mr. President honestly and amicably to achieve the change that he wants – not a matter of sentiments and tribalism. But on the issue of lopsidedness, I am sure that even the Nationa Assembly will cry out if such a thing happens. So, let us keep our fingers crossed. The President knows that he must allow equity, fair play and justice to prevail in his appointments because Nigeria belongs to all of us and lopsided ap­pointment amounts to corruption, also. If he is really out to fight corruption, he should be sensitive to such acts and avoid it.
You were one of the people that kept reminding former President Jonathan to fulfil his promise of con­structing the Second Niger Bridge but somehow, he was unable to do that, and now we are hearing about a shift in the official completion date. How do you see the whole buzz about the project?
Truth is that the Second Niger Bridge had been over-politicised. President Buhari should look at all the documents to determine what is true and false about the project. The Niger Bridge is a very laudable project that President Buhari must not miss. We hear that money for the project has been provided. The President should find out whether it is true or false. If the funds for the all-important project has been provided, is it really available? If it is available, where is it? Mr. Presi­dent should please, in the name of God, execute that project within the stipu­lated time that it has been scheduled. We know that the country is currently experiencing economic challenges and a lot of ongoing projects have been abandoned by contractors for lack of funds. But as the President continues to push his recovery exercise, he should give ample consideration to the Sec­ond Niger Bridge. Insincerity is our major problem in this country. And in that regard, I would say that our budget in Nigeria has never been truly imple­mented. So urge Mr. President to look into the 2015 budget again because as far as I am concerned, it is already a failure. Any budget that is not imple­mentable is useless.