By Punch Editorial Board


PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu’s remarks that Qatari investors should report Nigerian officials who solicit bribes from them while doing business in the country to him buttresses the deep-seated corruption afflicting one of Africa’s largest economies. On the final leg of his recent two-day state visit to Qatar, the President said he would grant investors direct access to him to report any official who asked for a bribe. It takes courage for the President to make such an open admission of the sleaze in his country before a global audience. To reap the benefits of his avowal, Tinubu must lead from the front, cleansing the rot from within by his actions and disposition.

Since becoming President, one of Tinubu’s pet projects is to reignite the inflow of foreign direct investment into Nigeria, partly constricted by corruption. At minus $198 million, FDI inflows into Nigeria entered negative territories in 2022, compared to $3.31 billion in 2021, per Statista.

With a private sector background, Tinubu says he will reverse the trend by fighting corruption. In Doha, he said, “I am here to give you the assurance that reforms are going on; forget about whatever you heard in the past. Do not offer a bribe to any of our people…. Whatever the obstacle or problem that some of you might have experienced; it is in the past because there is no obstacle in the future. And I am assuring you, it is free entry and free exit.”

Truly, Nigeria’s past was littered with corruption, which has had a toxic impact on the country’s ease-of-doing business ranking. Out of 180 countries, Nigeria ranked 145 in the Transparency International 2023 Corruption Perception Index with 25 points over 100. This is extremely poor. It is below the sub-Saharan average of 33 points and the global average of 48.4 points.

In that past, the Society for Forensic Accounting and Fraud Prevention calculated Nigeria’s annual losses to corruption at N2.5 trillion in 2020. The Anti-Corruption Agencies of Nigeria said in 2022 that financial crimes cost Nigeria nearly $18 billion annually. The immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, said Nigeria lost $150 billion to stealing in the oil industry in the 10 years to 2015.

Although some citizens have condemned Tinubu for washing Nigeria’s dirty linen in public, Nigeria has a corruption problem. At an anti-corruption summit in London in 2016, the then British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was overheard telling the late Queen Elizabeth II: “We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.” There is no worse international odium than this.

Under Buhari, two former governors were jailed for corruption. Inexplicably, Buhari pardoned them. That government withdrew the case of a third former governor on trial for stealing after he visited the Aso Rock Villa during contest for the Senate Presidency in 2019.

In what Buhari’s deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, described as “grand corruption,” connected officials looted cash from the Central Bank of Nigeria vaults pre-Buhari era. The trial of Sambo Dasuki, President Goodluck Jonathan’s National Security Adviser, and top officials over the alleged theft of $2.1 billion arms fund is in limbo.

Already, Tinubu’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, is on suspension for alleged graft. Her immediate predecessor is also under investigation for a similar offence.

The police, security agencies, judiciary, and ministries, departments and agencies are not left out of accusations of graft.

The President owes Nigeria a debt of rectitude. To make his tenure count, he must punish any whiff of corruption around him. He should adopt the strategy of modern Singapore leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who started the cleansing of the Asian country from his own inner circle.

https://punchng.com/qatar-remarks-nigerias-corruption-problem-runs-deep/

Nlfpmod

The cluelessness of emilokan and his gang is unprecedented in the history of Nigeria.
Tinubu few days ago told the emir of qatar that his minister are corrupt thieves. What a cluelessness!

What is more unfortunate is that this cluelessness has robbed off on a sizeable number of young chaps who shamelessly pop out from their hunger and hardship to defend clear daylight incompentence, cluelessness, idealessness and rubbish that has thrown our nation into war like scenes when we are not in a war.

Less than a year of desperate grab of power
The Economy is in shambles
The naira is in shambles
Security in shambles
Monumental corruptions and embezzlements
Simple daily commodities have become luxury items.
Unprecendented ebbinpawed hunger that has brought about daylight lootings of anything that looks like food.
Citizens dying in a quest to get what they can eat.

To crown the monumental cluelessness, the desperate grab leadership is bragging for receiving food from a war torn ukraine that is in need of all the help they can get.
This is a supposed giant of African.

The unfortunate thing was that Tinubu was itchy, twitchy and myopic to deduce that that silly statement is an indictment on him, his country anti-corruption agencies and citizens. Not forgetting that his own criminal records are bare for the world to see. You don't make that kind of statement in a supposed investment drive forum.

Racoon:
The unfortunate thing was that Tinubu was itchy, twitchy and myopic to deduce that that silly statement is an indictment on him, his country anti-corruption agencies and citizens. Not forgetting that his own criminal records are bare for the world to see. You don't make that kind of statement in a supposed investment drive forum.

Diplomatic talk is a serious business in the international community but Nigeria take nothing serious

corruption runs deeper in the life of APC

It is not people like Tinubu who should talk or preach against corruption, Peter Obi is the man to do so because in Nigeria, Tinubu is the morden symbol of corruption

COMRADES are speechless with this editorial