LAGOS, Nigeria
Hundreds of Nigerians on Monday marched in capital Abuja to call on President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that all parties indicted for corruption were prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The protesters, mostly young people, blamed corruption for the country’s woes – including high poverty and unemployment levels and rampant insecurity – and called on Buhari to follow through on his campaign promise to “stamp out corruption”.
“We are making a bold statement against the looting of the treasury,” Aisha Yesufu, leader of the #NigeriansMarchAgainstCorruption coalition, said while addressing protestors.
“Whatever the president is doing is what we asked him to do: probe them all,” she added, referring to officials implicated in corrupt practices.
“Nigerians have confidence in you; do not fail us,” Yesufu asserted, addressing the president. “This may be our last opportunity to salvage our nation.”
Last week, Buhari announced that officials accused of corruption would appear in court “in a matter of weeks”.
But shortly afterward, a group of statesmen and clerics, acting under the aegis of the “National Peace Committee” (which had helped produce a pre-election accord between Buhari and his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan), warned the president to follow “due process” in his fight against graft.
Many Nigerians criticized the committee’s warning, which, they said, represented an attempt to negotiate a soft landing for Jonathan-era officials implicated in corrupt practices.
In apparent rejection of the peace committee, placard-carrying demonstrators on Monday urged the president to ignore the elder statesmen’s advice.
The protest comes only one day after Nigeria's ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) alleged that more than $55.6 billion had disappeared from public coffers under the Jonathan administration.
“What sort of governance can go on if billions of Naira in a few hands are not recovered?” the APC asked in a statement. “The government needs every kobo of funds it can muster to bring about the change it has promised Nigerians.”
“Leaving such [enormous] funds in the hands of a few looters is dangerous, because they can use the funds to destabilize any government,” the party added.
“In fact,” the APC continued, “no one will be surprised if the looters use their dirty funds to sponsor public demonstrations against the government’s determination to recover the funds.”
In a statement issued Sunday, APC spokesman Lai Mohamed asserted: “The looters have embarked on a… campaign to discredit the government and sabotage the funds’ recovery process.”
In order to do so, he added, the guilty parties were using “newspaper columnists, ‘talking heads’ and otherwise respectable opinion leaders”.
