All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain and former presidential candidate, Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has said that for the country to prosper, the fight against corruption must continue beyond 2023.

The businessman said a good footstep in winning the battle to reduce corruption, if not kill it totally, is to ensure that corrupt people with unexplainable wealth do not get elected at any level.

He said those who have an explanation to make to anti-graft agencies and are aspiring for public offices must be put to task about their integrity.

In a statement, titled: 2023: The Fight Against Corruption Must Not Stop! Olawepo-Hashim recalled that when he was growing up, it was the practice then for women to lay their wares by the roadside and indicated the prices of the articles by the number of stones they kept on the ground.

“No one took the products without dropping the correct sums of money, and no one who passed by took the money and/or the wares away.

Read Also: We are Nigerianists not just Nigerians!

“I so much long for a return to the country of simple and honest people that Nigeria was. That is why it was easy for me to connect with the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) message of General Muhammadu Buhari and Maj.-Gen. Tunde Idiagbon in 1983.

“In Ilorin, Kwara State, where I schooled, we were the disciples of Idiagbon’s campaign against corruption as President of the Dramatic Society in Cherubim and Seraphim College. I was the lead actor in a drama skit against corruption on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) Ilorin Youth Scene.

“Also, I busted a pattern of stealing in the college kiosk, perpetrated by students appointed to supervise the kiosk. That is a story for another day that readers would find in my coming autobiography, titled: Sunrise at Midnight, by the Grace of God. The first volume will be released soon,” he said.

The APC chieftain said the fight against corruption was a major plank of the current Buhari administration.

He said corruption is among the reasons Nigeria is backward and the underlying cause of the security problems in the country, such as banditry.

“Nigeria loses a lot to corruption. According to PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC), a global consulting outfit, if not arrested by 2030, corruption will be costing Nigeria 37 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP); that is, $200 billion, a whooping N100 trillion (Naira), about 10 times our national budget.

“It will translate to $1,000 per capital; 500,000 by each Nigerian. The significance of this on our lives, in terms of avoidable death, is staggering.

“Corruption in Nigeria is in various dimensions in high places, caused by undisciplined life styles, weak regulatory regimes and institutions, eroding ethics and values and a triumphant feeling of impunity that believes there will be no consequence for wrongdoings.

“At the lower levels, corruption is rationalised as a result of poor earnings. ‘Man go survive’, or as that everybody is doing it, ‘It is our way’, but it is not our way.

“The corruption situation is compounded by an increasingly expanding population of people with ethics and value system that have come to embrace corruption as an acceptable standard and become increasingly audacious that they attack men and women of integrity as ‘failures’ even though most of the attackers come from the ranks of the poorest. They are choristers of those ‘nouveau riche’, who have helped themselves from the public purse.

“They have a sizable presence online, venerating corrupt lifestyle.

“The fight against corruption is a serious business. Law enforcement will not be enough to win it. Regulatory reforms are important but just as well as ethical reform on a mass scale. The role of technology is also central in this fight as we aim to reduce the scope of human manipulation of the system,” he said.