President Muhammadu Buhari Has said that he would do his best to ensure that corrupt or compromised Nigerians will have no place in his cabinet.
Buhari, who once again painted a gory picture of the massive corruption that took across all sectors of the economy in the previous administrations, noting with regret that crude oil theft is still thriving under his government.
He spoke on a live programme, ‘Good Morning Nigeria’, on the Nigerian Television Authority on Monday. The president was trying to explain the delay in appointing ministers and other key officials.
According to Buhari, in assembling those who will work with him, especially ministers, he will avoid corrupt or compromised Nigerians and those he described as “hostages.”
He said, “From what I have seen so far, we need very patriotic Nigerians to be ministers; Nigerians that can work very hard with knowledgeable experience; committed Nigerians to be in charge of ministries.
“A lot of institutions in Nigeria are compromised, everybody for himself and God for all of us. It is most unfortunate. We have people, educated and experienced people, but everybody seems to be working for himself on how much they could get away with as soon as possible.
“We have to look for technocrats and politicians. We have to look out for decent people in this class to give them the responsibility of being in charge of ministries and important parastatals.
“We will try as much as possible to avoid appointing hostages; by this, I mean people who have been in the system but compromised their personal and professional integrity.
“It is taking so much time (to appoint ministers) because a number of knowledgeable people have been compromised. They have been compromised by people who will like to depend on them to damage our economy and security, a lot of them have been compromised.
“The worst thing that I think can happen is to get a compromised person to be in charge of institutions. There is no way he could be efficient or patriotic. Somebody behind the scene will be tele-guiding him at the expense of the nation.
“This is what we are trying to avoid. We cannot rush to give this responsibility to people that have unfortunately been compromised.
“This is because there is no way you can effectively supervise let’s say 20 ministries, you have to give it to people you trust and you allow them to perform according to the constitution of the country. If you appoint compromised people, then we will be back to square one and Nigeria will be the loser.”
The president thinks that there are som constraining factor in the democratic tenets which one has to abide with in relation to the quick recovery of the country’s stolen tpresources.
Unlike the military regime that abuhari headed in the early 1980s, which ramrodded people to jailed with little sense of justice, under democracy the you need to build a thorough and impregnable cases against culprits to get corruption conviction.
He said, “The multiparty democracy system for developing countries has its advantages and relative disadvantages in the sense that for us to get the help of the developed countries, we have to get our facts: documents, complete and reliable investigation, take them to court and get these people prosecuted.
“Meanwhile, the theft continues. Up to the 10th of this month, our crude is still being illegally lifted by people who are in government.
“We are trying to get these documents, we are getting cooperation from the international community. We are going very soon to make sure that those who perpetrated this crime against Nigeria will be faced with facts and be taken to our courts.
“We have got the cooperation of some of the countries that are the destinations of our crude and we are discussing with them. We have to maintain high confidentiality so that we don’t risk some of the people in Nigeria that are helping us to trace the destinations of this stolen crude and then the accounts where the proceeds are being paid instead of the Federal Government account.
“I don’t think the NNPC knows how many accounts are there in which payments are made on Nigerian crude. The monumental fraud has been going on for a number of years, a lot of Nigerians cannot comprehend it.”
Buhari however admitted that the task of getting looted fund repatriated is a difficult one.
“The countries are willing, but I also said it has to comply with their own system, that we have to get the documents, especially the shipping documents: how they load here in our terminals, the destinations.
“Some of them even change the crude or the destinations on the high sea and then change the account, instead of the Federal Government account, they pay into individual accounts.
He also spoke on the ongoing leadership crisis in the National Assembly. “I have to be very sensitive to the constitution of the country. I do not like to be told by anybody especially the legislators that I am interfering in their matter. There are three arms of government: executive, legislature and the judiciary.
“Over the last 16 years, they (lawmakers) have developed the system of choosing their leaders. There is no way I can directly interfere. All I can do through the party is to appeal to their conscience that what I already observed, we should go over it as soon as possible.
“When I say ‘we’, I mean the APC. We cannot win the battle and lose the war. We must not allow personal ambition to succeed in dividing us and allow PDP to deal with us.
“This is what the National Assembly has allowed so far; the APC is giving the PDP the allowance to take over the government again. This is extremely disheartening, I am very worried.
“The only thing I can do is to appeal to the conscience of the APC members in the Senate and House of Reps. It took us time to get to where we are, I don’t want personal ambitions to scuttle our success and therefore fail to deliver on our promises to the nation,”Buhari said.
