THERE have always been the debate about whether the anti-corruption crusade of this administration is working or not. And whether members of the cabinet and the different arms of government have bought into the crusade or it’s a case of ‘President Mohammadu Buhari war on corruption’.

To someone like me, I have always said in spite of the laudable effort of the president in this area, he is on his own in the crusade. He is driving force while majority of those with him are only paying lip service to the anti corruption war. In fact most of them are not even paying any (lip)service to the crusade. I am not sure I have heard any of the ministers, including those in the different arms of government coming out to make any major impactful statement on corruption or the anti- corruption crusade. Most of them are more comfortable with the old order of impunity and business of governance of how much you can steal before the expiration of your term or tenure. Where padding of budget is the rule rather than the exception. Where rule of law is practiced in the breach. It is not new, it has

always been the practice over the years. The past years have been years of impunity and most of them want it to continue. They know they would always get away with it not until ‘this Buhari’ came in with his anti-corruption war to stop the show.

Corruption is the name of the game. It is a thriving business in government. A friend sent a joke to me yesterday, it was about a young boy who went to his father to tell him that he was considering a career in organized crime. The father now asked, ‘government or private sector’ to which the boy responded, ‘I personally would suggest government, they never go to jail.’ And that is the situation with governance in the country today. Public service or political office is seen as an avenue to make money, what with padding of bills/budget, inflation of contracts.

Corruption does not know party affiliation. It does happen in every facet of government. In the ministries, agencies and parastatals. I won’t be surprised if such atrocities as budget padding, contract inflations and sundry other tendencies go on under the nose of the president in the villa. Indeed, most if not all our leaders are thieves and have fallen short of the corruption test.

We have seen the ungodly padding of the budget in the House of Reps. Frankly, speaking, all the parties involved are guilty going by what is coming out of the (un)hallowed chambers and none should be exonerated. We only got to hear of the current mess because there was a falling apart of the parties involved.

Hon Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chairman of the Appropriation committee before his removal or should we say resignation since we do not know which side to believe, had accused the Speaker, Hon

Yakubu Dogara, his deputy, Yusuf Lasun and two others of conniving to distribute to them- selves N40 billion out of the N100billion allocated to the National Assembly in the 2016 budget.

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But a counter accusation from the leadership of the House equally claimed that Jibrin inflated the budget by N250billion and diverted money meant for lawmakers and MDAs to other uses. It did not stop at that, he was accused of fraudulently allocating project worth several millions to his wife. This is where I have problem with the accused and the “accusers”. Why are we just knowing that Jibrin committed this monumental fraud when he opened his own can of worms. I equally find it difficult to wrap it round my head that he alone could perpetrate all these without the knowledge of other committee members. At least we have not been told that it was a one-man committee.

But there are further revelations, as reported in newspapers and which was confirmed by a presidency source that show that most of our lawmakers and majority of the people in this government did not sign into the anti corruption pact. There are indications that the budget was inflated to a whooping sum of N481billion. It was discovered further that in the budget proposal from the executive on the N4.06billion earmarked for provision of kits, vaccines and antiretroviral drugs under the ministry of health was reduced to N1.01billion.

The source said if the budget was passed with that reduction, the ministry would have run out of stock by October. This would have adversely affected the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS, eradication of polio. How wick- ed.

This is something that would benefit the populace, but that is of no concern to the law- makers. What matters to them is what they

and family members stand to gain, not what would benefits majority of Nigerians. That is just in one of the ministries. Do we know of what became of the budget of other ministries? How much was removed and added to the so called constituency project which in itself is a fraud?

Indeed, the current revelations go to show what is happening in government. It is thus imperative that the there should be a microscopic look at the entire budget as instances of padding could be all pervasive. The budget proposals from the MDAs should be checked and rechecked again while there should be justification for any money that had to be spent. Not only that, a budget implementation and verification committee should be in place, the job of the committee would be to look at the level of implementation of the budget vis-a-vis the money allocated.

As for the perpetrators of the Reps’ mess, the anti-corruption agencies should probe the allegations and the result of their investigation made public. Let us then take it from there and see whether the guilty ones would not take the honourable step, although a friend once described them as ‘dishonourable members’. But I am convinced that there are still a few men of good conscience in that chamber. And the right thing would be done.

The anti-corruption fight should not be left to the president alone. It is the responsibility of all. That’s how we can have a nation of our dream, a nation where majority refused to sleep till the early hours of Thursday because they waited to listen to the speech of the president of the most powerful nation in the world and to boot the best democracy, Barack Obama and follow the convention of the Democratic Party where delegates were not induced with money… and nostalgically wish Nigeria is also equally endowed with selfless leadership and followers.