TI report, an embarrassment to Buhari’s fight against corruption – PDP

...Says report validates party’s stand on FG’s anti -graft crusade

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the recent report of an international organisation, Transparency International (TI) as embarrassing to the touted onslaught against corrupt practices by the President Muhammadu Buhari – led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration in the country.

The party said that the revealing 2019 corruption index report on Nigeria by Transparency International (TI) has further validated its position that corruption has worsened under President Buhari and the APC government.

The PDP described as a national embarrassment that under an administration by the same leader who wears the medal as “African Union (AU) Anti-Corruption Champion”, and whose government boasts of zero-tolerance for corruption, Nigeria now ranks as fourth most corrupt country in West Africa and one of the leading most corrupt countries of the world.

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party said the TI report shows that the country dropping to a malodorous 26, from the already disapproving 27 points it maintained since 2017,

This, it said, had further exposed the Buhari administration and the APC as merely posturing as saints and hounding innocent Nigerians with fake anti -corruption war, while engaged in unprecedented looting of national resources.

“It indeed speaks volume that the Buhari administration and the APC that came into power in 2015 on an anti-corruption mantra, has ended up becoming the most corrupt in the history of our dear nation.

“Moreover, the fact that the APC and its government, with their numerous megaphones, have remained silence over the report is also very revealing.

“By this TI report, Nigerians are no longer in doubt as to why our nation has been plagued with worsening economic hardship, poverty and hunger, dilapidated infrastructure and devastating retrogression in critical sectors such as health, power, education, transport, agriculture among others in the last four years while APC leaders, their families and cronies, gloat in affluence to the chagrin of Nigerians”, said the PDP.

The party recalled that it has since been challenging Buhari Presidency and the APC to come clean, account for the over N14 trillion allegedly stolen by APC leaders from government coffers in the last four years.

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This, the PDP said “includes the stolen N9 trillion detailed in the NNPC leaked memo; the N1.1 trillion worth of crude allegedly stolen by certain APC leaders using 18 unregistered vessels; the over N1.4 trillion stolen from shady oil subsidy deals as well as monies stolen from sensitive government agencies including the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) among others”.

It insisted that the Buhari administration and the APC have not only failed in their boasts to tackle corruption and insecurity but have ended up economically despoiling the nation and worsening security challenges.

The party said since the Buhari Presidency and the APC cannot controvert these damning facts, they are left with no option than to apologise to Nigerians and “get ready for their place in the dustbin of history as the worst government and political party ever in the history of our nation”.