ADE OBISESAN, Lagos | Thursday
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has come under fire for failing to back his anti-corruption talk with action, will this week take his first major step to repair his country’s battered reputation by inaugurating an anti-graft commission.
Many Nigerians, including human rights activists and local journalists, have criticised Obasanjo for talking so much about corruption since he came to power last year, but doing little to stem the vice.
Critics have accused him of soft-peddling on an inquiry into the activities of the country’s late military dictator General Sani Abacha, and of refusing to investigate claims of even larger corruption under his predecessor Ibrahim Babangida.
Recently, a survey conducted by the Berlin-based Transparency International ranked Nigeria as the most corrupt in the world. Foreign investors have cited corruption in Nigeria as a disincentive to business in the world’s most populous black nation.
The government accepted the verdict, and said it would attack the pervasive problem.
“Wherever Nigeria is placed, the government knows that Nigerians are corrupt and we are determined to stop it,” said Alphonsus Nwosu, a top aide to the Nigerian president.
In his inauguration speech on May 29 last year, Obasanjo promised to fight corruption, injustice and human rights violations, but expectations have since been dampened.
“It is like the regime went to sleep over the corruption issue immediately after that promise was made. It seems as if the problems of corruption overwhelmed the administration to the point that it is rendered helpless,” a pastor in a Lagos church, Adeyinka Dahunsi, said.
The new government has launched a series of probes into the Abacha family and his cronies. Mohammed, the eldest surviving son of the late general, has been formally charged in Abuja for the first time with financial crimes and corruption.
Members of the military regime are accused of plundering up to four billion dollars from public accounts. – AFP