Chief Mike Ozekhome(SAN), in an interview with Daily Sun, said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti corruption war is just a vendetta against certain individuals not that he is actually fighting corruption.
He said, "the root cause of corruption itself has not been removed. APC, the ruling party is the reverse side of the coin called the PDP. So, you can’t separate the two parties.
When asked of his view on the state of the Nation, he said: "The state of the nation can be seen even by the blind; can be felt even by the deaf and dumb; can be experienced even by the so-called elite not to talk of the common man and common woman. The economy is on a nose dive; Nigeria is on a precipice; in a terrible quagmire. The naira is somersaulting like an acrobat on a daily basis, now averaging about N490 to N500 per one dollar from the N195 it was in May last year. Nigeria which only in 2015 was the fifth most developing economy in the world and the first in Africa with over $500 billion received by World Bank and IMF has today come as number three in Africa and 137th poorest nation in the world.
"So, you don’t need a Professor Peller or the oracle at Ile-Ife to let you know that things are very, very bad. There is mass disinvestment, there is capital flight, companies are closing down and relocated to nearby Ghana, Republic of Benin. More importantly, some major airlines have since closed shop in Nigeria and relocated to nearby countries and the few remaining like Emirates, British Airways, Delta, Air France, they don’t even allow you to pay now in naira; you now buy your ticket in dollars. So, that is a national calamity, a national calamity of cataclysmic proportions.
"Now, the anti-corruption war as I’ve always said is not an anti-corruption war against corruption which is systemic in Nigeria but against individuals because as we are moving against the last crop of individuals, the present individuals who are there are having a field day because the root cause of corruption itself has not been removed. APC, the ruling party is the reverse side of the coin called the PDP. So, you can’t separate the two parties.
"To attempt to separate them is a futile attempt to separate six from half a dozen or to separate hamlet from the Prince of Denmark. You cannot. They’re one and the same. The major players in the APC today, the ruling government were all major players in PDP. As soon as they decamp to APC, some of them on the eve of elections due to quarrel of primaries, some of them after the elections, as soon as they decamp to APC, then they become free of their political leprosy like Neman the leper in the bible that was dipped into river Jordan seven times and became cleansed of his leprosy.
"Once you move from PDP to APC, you become St. John the Baptist, you become a pope. For as long as you stay within the rank of the PDP, then you are a betrayal, you are tried in the media, you’re detained without bail, you’re held even when bail has been given to you. Opposition is being decimated, so that if we’re not careful, we may end up having a one party state in Nigeria. Whereas the past government allowed the opposition a free reign that it even allowed itself to be defeated in a free and fair election. We’re not having that in Nigeria today. So Nigeria is actually in a total complete mess.
Culled from Daily Sun
