Stop Making Mockery Of Fight Against Corruption, Wike Tells FG

Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has berated the Federal Government for allegedly making a mockery of the fight against corruption, describing the anti-graft war as pretentious and intended to silence opposition in the country.


Delivering the keynote address of the 12 General Synod of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion at  St Paul ‘ s Cathedral , Port Harcourt, yesterday, the governor queried how politicians, who decamped from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party,  PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC,  suddenly became too clean for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC,  to investigate.

He said since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office, the only corrupt Nigerians known to his government had allegedly been politicians that chose to remain in PDP.

He said Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, was harassed at a time by the Federal Government because he contested the office against the political arrangement of his APC party.

He said: “How can the Federal Government justify the situation where former public office holders from PDP are continuously harassed, hunted and hounded with corruption charges by EFCC, while at the same time sparing those other members who defected to APC of similar investigations and treatment except the pure vendetta against Saraki for daring to contest the office of the Senate Presidency against the wish of the cabals in his party?”

Wike urged the church to condemn what he dubbed the lopsided anti-corruption war of the Federal Government, adding that it should also shout out against the alleged corrupt actions of the government.

His words: “People say power of any kind corrupts, but political power can be more vicious if exercised unchecked and in disregard of democratic norms.

“While we all support the Federal Government’s much-vaunted, but pretentious fight against corruption, it is patently wrong to fight corruption with corruption and double-speak or by side-stepping the rule of law, disobeying court orders and blackmailing the judiciary to submission. Unfortunately, this is the order of the day under the current democratic dispensation.

“What has become of the case of those who were arrested for printing fake ballot papers with INEC’s  authentic serial numbers to be used to rig the December 2016 legislative re-run elections?”