The Buhari Media Organization (BMO) has described the allegation by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that looting under the President Buhari administration was responsible for “poverty” and “insecurity” in the country as ‘uncreative fiction’.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke, the group noted that there was no form of looting taking place under the President Buhari administration, and if any spectre of such appeared, this government has made it a point of its corruption fight to find it and deal with it.
“All claims by the tactless opposition party, the PDP, the architects of the kind of corruption Nigeria under Buhari is fighting to rid us off, to the effect that there is some form of looting under this President, are false. There may be instances where some persons may be found wanting in the management of resources within their sphere of administration, this government has time after time unearthed such malfeasances, investigated it, and pursued it up to prosecution.
“There will be no sweeping under the carpet of matters of corruption under Muhammadu Buhari.
“It takes absolute courage and unflinching integrity to prosecute corruption, how much more to take it on when it lurks within your government.
“Under the President Buhari administration, corruption would not be permitted any breathing space.
“Unfortunately, we cannot say same for 16 years of the PDP administration where corruption was a household affair. It had become so accepted within their spheres that when the public demanded accountability, top members of the government told Nigerians that it was a “family affair.”
“In fact, didn’t a sitting PDP President tell the whole world that ‘stealing is not corruption’?
The group stated that in fact the People’s Democratic Party was responsible for institutionalising corruption in the manner that the Buhari administration is trying to fix.
“The PDP administration permitted the flourishing of corruption so much that it almost became the norm. It was under the Presidency of a PDP administration that the concept of giving lawmakers ‘Ghana-Must-Go’ bags filled with raw cash to sway them into taking unpatriotic stands became rife. Those moneys, mind you, belong to the Nigerian people.
“It was under their administrations that government officials, who today are mostly facing prosecution or have been thrown into jail, looted fearlessly and recklessly the country’s commonwealth. Those funds were meant for roads, health facilities, schools, social investment projects and other programmes meant for the Nigerian people.
“Even moneys meant for the purchase of weapons for our soldiers fighting a war ended up as PDP campaign funds. Yet they shamelessly, tactlessly, and even foolishly pretend that Nigeria’s security challenges took root five years ago! The Nigerian people know better!
“With over a Trillion Naira recovered from many of these people, it is beyond clear where Nigeria’s poverty and security problems are rooted.
“If these moneys had not been channeled to private pockets, but put to use where they were supposed to be, President Buhari would not be tackling the economic and security challenges he is battling today in repositioning the country in its rightful place of glory.”
The group stated that the figures being bandied by the PDP as looted moneys were all “phantom claims that have gone beyond telling cheap lies to creating uninteresting cock-and-bull stories, to be believed at the peril of the listener.”
