To critics of President Muhammadu Buhari, the time to resign from office is now. He should follow the footsteps of former South African President Jacob Zuma. But others say that those behind the call are the corrupt who are uncomfortable with the President’s anti-graft crusade. They argue against putting Buhari and Zuma on the same scale, writes JOESPH JIBUEZE.
THE support base for President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-graft battle swelled yesterday with senior lawyers and activists berating those urging the president to take a cue from former South African President Jacob Zuma who was forced to quit office last week.
They said there was no basis to compare Buhari, who is fighting corruption, to Zuma, who resigned on account of alleged corruption.
“It was paradoxical that in Nigeria, the president is being asked to leave office for fighting corruption”, Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) Director Prof Ishaq Akintola said in a statement.
Some Nigerians have asked President Buhari to follow Zuma’s footsteps by resigning from office.
Advising Buhari to emulate South Africa’s immediate past president, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) berated the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of not doing enough to hold the President accountable.
The local spokesman of the ADP in Lagos State, Adelaja Adeoye described the APC as a party filled with “yes men” leaders.
Also in a twit, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain Femi Fani-Kayode, said Buhari should be the next African leader to resign, following last year’s resignations of former Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and Zuma last Wednesday.
In his tweets in the night of Wednesday, last week, Fani-Kayode said it was time for African leaders who were so engrossed with power to step down.
He wrote “First Mugabe went. Now Zuma is going.
“Next Buhari will go. After that Biya and Museveni will go.
In separate statements, two former presidents, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, urged Buhari to perish the idea of seeking a fresh mandate after the expiration of his four-year tenure on May 29, next year.
But, the lawyers and the activists faulted the calls for Buhari’s resignation on the account of Zuma’s ouster.
According to the MURIC director, corrupt Nigerians are those behind the attacks on President Buahri.
Citing the example of South Africa, where Zuma was forced to resign from office after corruption charges were filed against him, Akintola, in a statement, said that it was paradoxical that in Nigeria, the president is being asked to leave office for fighting corruption.
He noted that Nigeria has become the laughing stock of the outside world as two former presidents and the National Assembly have been doing everything to prevent the president from seeking a second term in office.
Akintola said: “Former South African president, Jacob Zuma, was forced out of office last week for corruption charges. The South African Supreme Court had in October 2017 upheld about 800 corruption charges against Zuma before his party, the African National Congress (ANC) ordered him to quit.
“Zuma’s exit from power is very didactic. It reveals South Africa’s mature democratic practice where a president is booted out for being corrupt whereas in Nigeria, our own president is being pressurised to leave office for fighting corruption.
“Here lies the monumental paradox. The outside world must be laughing at Nigeria as they watch the unfolding drama. Two former heads of state have openly asked President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek a second term. The National Assembly is also fighting tooth and nail to get rid of the president as many of its members are enmeshed in corruption cases.”
He said unlike many Nigerian politicians, Buhari owns no house abroad and neither has any stolen fund been traced to him.
According to him, his selling point was his incorruptibility and those angling to stop him from contesting for a second term in office are doing so because he has plugged their means of siphoning public funds.
“He has succeeded in blocking leakages through which our common patrimony has been siphoned into the private pockets of greedy politicians. Foreign countries endorse him as a leader of unassailable integrity and the naira is getting back its lost glory as a result of all these. Prices of goods are falling,” he said.
The MURIC director added that the Buhari administration has diversified the economy, revived the railways and given the due attention to agriculture.
He therefore urged Nigerians not to fall for the antics of “these corrupt and powerful individuals” as their main grudge with Buhari was that he has blocked their means of making easy money.
The MURIC statement reads: “Diversification of the economy is turning other sectors into veritable sources of income. The railways are roaring back. Agriculture is once again taking its prime of place; electricity supply is witnessing unprecedented improvement while macadam roads are fast replacing the death traps which claimed hundreds of lives on a regular basis. Buhari’s social welfare scheme is already taking care of thousands of Nigerian youths.
“The MURIC urges Nigerians to open their eyes very wide. Those who stole Nigeria’s money have become very powerful and they are using their stolen money to spread false propaganda to de-market Buhari. All the allegations of nepotism, religious bias and incompetence are tales from moonlight concocted by corrupt elements who want to bring back corruption.
“For blocking their access to easy money, they wished Buhari dead. Based on their knowledge of the potency of the alleged gas poison conspiracy theory, they said Buhari was on life-support machine.
They claimed he was dead and secretly buried. They made the claims with so much vehemence and total confidence that, with hindsight, we are constrained to believe that only those involved in the alleged attempt could have made such strong claims.
“But when all that failed, they are now trying to incite the populace against him. They claimed that herdsmen were killing travellers on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. They also claimed that the same herdsmen were slaughtering people like rams on Shagamu-Ore Expressway. Now, they are claiming that herdsmen have attacked workers in Ondo council office. But police debunked all these false alarms within hours.”
Akintola identified corruption as the bane of the country and that Buhari has been tackling it head-on.
He said: “We reaffirm our conviction that it was corruption that brought poverty and disease to the Nigerian nation.
“Corruption was responsible for the bad roads. Corruption robbed us of a reliable public health and transport system. Corruption brought death in the air via frequent plane crashes. Corruption wrecked the Nigerian Airways and the Nigerian Railway Corporation. Corruption is responsible for insecurity. Corruption caused mass unemployment. Corruption turned the education sector into a comatose environment. This enemy is now being tackled by the Buhari administration. Who wants all these evils to come back?
“To cap the edifice, we testify that we have seen signs that corruption is receiving deadly blows from the Buhari administration and it may eventually die for our great country to survive if we give Buhari the chance to consolidate on the present gains. If it is true that South Africa expelled its corrupt president for the sake of South Africa, Nigeria must retain its incorruptible leader for the sake of Nigeria.”
Dismissing the call for Buhari’s resignation, Ahmed Raji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said Zuma and Buhari’s situations were not the same.
Unlike Zuma, there have been no allegations of corruption against the person of Buhari, the senior advocate said.
On the perceived failure to successfully tackle the herdsmen crisis, Raji said insecurity was not enough reason to ask the President to resign.
Raji said: “President Buhari is different from Zuma. Allegations of corruption were directed at Zuma. Noboby has leveled any allegation of corruption against President Buhari as a person.
“Even his bitterest enemies concede to him that he’s an honest person. So, I do not think the two situations are the same. I do not think so.
“And it will be wrong to ask him to resign simply because Zuma has resigned in South Africa. It will be very wrong.”
On calls for him to resign for failing to fulfill his electoral promises and constitutional responsibilities, Raji said the situation was not enough reason to ask Buhari to throw in the towel.
“I don’t think those are enough reasons to ask him to resign. It will be carrying it too far to ask him to resign because of insecurity. Resignation is a very weighty thing.
“It is very delicate to ask the President to resign, and we have to be extremely careful. We cannot ask the President to go the moment there is insecurity in a part of Nigeria.”
A constitutional lawyer, Ike Ofuokwu, said while there is no doubt about Buhari’s personal integrity, he has massively failed Nigerians and should resign.
“There was so much expectation of President Buhari. I was one of those who expected so much from him. But if we must be honest with ourselves, he has failed Nigerians.
“His war against corruption is selective. Herdsmen are killing innocent Nigerians daily. His economic management abilities are poor.
“Buhari has failed and he does not even need any parliament to ask him to resign. We expect him to humbly resign.”
On whether Buhari is corrupt, Ofuokwu said: “No. I must be honest. I don’t think that any acts of corruption of can be attributed to him. But for crying out loud, people around him are very corrupt.
“We saw the Maina-gate, and a man who was suspended for corruption being recalled by him. His anti-corruption stance has no meaning when those surrounding him are so corrupt.”
An Adamawa-based activist and public affairs commentator Suleiman Baba-Jada, urged Nigerians to render more support to the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari to tackle corruption and other challenges facing the nation.
Baba-Jada told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in an interview in Yola that what Buhari needed to tackle the various challenges was support from Nigerians and not insults and unwarranted criticisms.
Baba-Jada said: “The President needs support instead of inciting criticisms mostly from those who are perceived as corrupt people with cases to answer in EFCC.
“The whole thing looks more like corruption is fighting back, and that is the more reason why Nigerians must stand up and support the President.
“The situation we have now, with many people with corrupt cases occupying elected positions means that definitely the fight against corruption won’t be that easy for the president.”
According to him, the inciting criticisms are meant to distract the president.
He warned that such people “risk the wrath of the silent majority that are yearning for an end to the menace of corruption and other acts of criminality in the country.”
Baba-Jada backed the setting up of special courts to try corruption cases, saying it would eliminate the delay being experienced in dispensing of such cases, a situation which has been denting the image of the country.
“I also want to declare my support for Magu, the EFCC boss, who I believe has good intention and commitment to deliver in his job.”
The septuagenarian, who spoke on hate speech, cautioned journalists against being used by unpatriotic politicians and ethnic champions to heat up the polity.
He said: “We are seeing how politicians who lost out in elections or were not given appointment are using the media to insult their perceived enemies in the name of freedom of expression.
“The media need to be careful from being used to create problems by such politicians and ethnic champions.
“We are seeing how such politicians who used to be close to Buhari are now attacking everything thing he does in an attempt to settle personal scores just, because they were not given appointments or carried along.
“Some of them have access to the president but they rather chose to get to him using the media in a combative and derogatory language.”
He urged Buhari to change his approach to issues “by being more firm and decisive to prove wrong the impression being given by his traducers that he is being controlled by a cabal.”
