Your government lacks focus, anti graft war uncoordinated, CACOL tells Buhari

An anti corruption pressure group, Centre for Anti Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has said that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari was lacking direction and slow,

especially in taking key decisions that affect his administration’s policy implementation and overall governance in the country.

The group lamented the slow pace of success recorded in the anti graft war, attributing it to the lack of synergy and purposefulness among the anti graft agencies, law enforcement and security agencies in the country,

adding that the President had fueled the situation by his lukewarm attitude and indecisiveness in checking the lapses.

The Executive Chairman of CACOL, Debo Adeniran who stated this at a press briefing as part of activities to mark World Anti Corruption Day, at its office in ljaiye, Lagos,

stressing that frequent disagreement and rivalry among top government officials, parastatals and agencies of the administration had affected the implementation of policies, aided corruption and ultimately poor governance.

He said, “In recent period there are obvious cases of dysfunctionalism in the prosecution of the anti corruption campaign. There is the glaring lack of synergy and absence of coordination among the various anti corruption agencies, as well between other relevant law enforcement and security agencies.

“The most recent is that involving the botched attempt by the EFCC to arrest the retired Director General of both DSS and NIA. The EFCC was prevented from executing the warrant by DSS officers.

This is not the first time that scenario would played out. This arrogant display of official lawlessness is not only reprehensible but an indictment of the President and team’s failure to walk his talk on corruption campaign.

“We in CACOL call on President Buhari to put his house in order and address the recent internal sabotage against the much acclaimed anti corruption war.

The problem is absence of coordination and the ability to effectively deploy in a complementary manner the available internal security resources in the country,” Adeniran added.

Speaking further, Adeniran lamented the high unemployment, inequality and poverty in the country especially among the youths, while tracing the poor security situation in the country to the lack of equipment,

inadequate training and poor welfare condition which have according to him made the police unable to provide adequate security for the country.

He urged the President to reshuffle his cabinet and sack the non performing ministers, while particularly berating the Ministry of Works, Housing and Power, for poor performance, inspite of the huge budgetary allocation to the ministry since the advent of this administration.

“Compounding this as a significant driver is the unprecedented level of poverty, inequality and unemployment among the youths.

The police and other security performing policing internal security duties, road safety, Civil Defence, VIO and paramilitary established by states lack adequate training facilities and poor welfare condition all necessary to support effectively policing.

“We call on the President to rejig his non performing cabinet. The combined Ministries of Works, Housing and Power has been lukewarm and helps vigorously as leakage for corruption, especially as the combine ministry has gotten the largest chunk of budget allocation since inception in 2015,” Adeniran said .

Iniobong Iwok