• …Why Buhari is not winning the war against corruption

By Perez Brisibe

CHIEF Frank Kokori, a chieftain of the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, and a former general secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers Union, NUPENG, was one of those who fought against the military during the late General Sani Abacha era. Kokori, a staunch supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari, in this interview, spoke on Nigeria at 59 and his thoughts on the country

What is your appraisal of Nigeria 59 years after independence?

Personally, I see Nigeria as a country that is still crawling like a baby. We are not even walking not to talk of running because all our contemporaries like Malaysia, Indonesia not to mention even China have gone ahead in terms of development while we are rather crawling and retrogressing developmentally. So, I am so disappointed with the progress of Nigeria in the past 59 years.

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I blame the whole thing on corrupt leadership all over the years and it is a shame that at this time over the years, Nigeria could not bring corruption to a standstill as corruption is getting worse by the day. President Buhari wanted to take the country out of it but I’m becoming disillusioned with the current happenings in the country. With what I am seeing and experiencing we are not moving.

Expectations from President Buhari

I expected more from President Buhari in the fight against corruption because I know in great countries, the greatest battle they fight is corruption. These other things we are battling with are because there is so much corruption. There is no justice for the ordinary man as we have witnessed series of oppression and victimization of the ordinary man. In other words, the institution that is supposed to protect the people, like the police force and other security agencies are still victimizing, oppressing and extorting monies from the people at will.

When you have this kind of system, and you have a corrupt police force and judiciary, how does the country move forward? So, these are the things, and Buhari is not as agile as he used to be in the 80s, so a lot of things are now being done by people dropping his name. My own case was a classic example.

The Presidency gave me a job and other people took it away from me through corruption. But I pray that Buhari should get his trousers strapped properly in his second term in office and I am happy that from the look of things, he is getting healthier and I believe that he is not old as claimed. Take a look at Joe Bidden of the US who is gunning for the office of the number one citizen of America and the likes of myself.

I want to advice President Buhari not to leave things to any kind of kitchen cabinet or cabal. He should face the business of governance properly. The number one thing why I decided and told him that I will float and sink with you (Buhari) when we started the APC was this fight against corruption because we needed a tough leader to fight corruption and he was the symbol of that leader.

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And that was why when he resumed office in his first term, corruption virtually vanished, but as time went on, people felt that Buhari was not the same Buhari of the 80s hence they now saw a weakness and decided to exploit the weaker side of his fight against corruption; hence corruption reared its head afresh in the country.

Appraisal of labour unions

The labour unions, particularly the Nigeria Labour Congress, Trade Union Congress and others have not lived up to expectation. In our own time, it was all about struggles as we made a lot of sacrifices and suffered deprivation. If you say you are in the labour movement and you are not ready to suffer deprivation which entails sacrifice and depriving yourself from a lot of luxury and putting your life on the line, then you not a unionist.

These days, some of the labour leaders are behaving like the Nigerian politicians with the country leading the pack in corruption especially in third world countries particularly as regards the quantum of corrupt practices making it the home of corruption.

Vanguard