Niyi
Osundare, Nigeria’s international award-winning literary
icon, on Sunday dismissed Senate President Bukola Saraki as “Mr. Corruption personified”.
icon, on Sunday dismissed Senate President Bukola Saraki as “Mr. Corruption personified”.
The English
language professor spoke to SaharaReporters at the 50th birthday celebration of
Jiti Ogunye.
“Most of our
politicians are criminals, real criminals,” he thundered. “Many of them should
be behind bars. They are not serious. Such prodigals!” he lamented.
“Look at our
Senate, the band of people that you have there, where the Senate President [who
says he] is talking about corruption is himself Mr. Corruption personified. We
still remember how he became Senate President, he and his cohorts.”
Osundare
expressed concern that Nigerian politicians only care about winning the next
election and not necessarily about the people.
He commended
the commitment of the Muhammadu Buhari-led government to fighting corruption,
but stressed that the executive cannot be observed in isolation from the other
tiers of government.
“We cannot
talk about the government of Buhari in isolation from the legislature and the judiciary
because this is longer a military government but a three-tier government. So,
we have to take a comprehensive look at all of them. What happens when the
presidency is against corruption but the legislature is frustrating it? The
legislators have a reason to frustrate because they are not very clean people.”
Turning to
perceived corrupt practices in the judicial system, he alleged that some judges
are paid just to stall corruption cases.
“When you go
to our courts, you are not sure you would get justice and then the way people
buy injunctions. You’ve stolen people’s money, everybody knows you’re corrupt,
now you’re to be prosecuted and then you shop for a judge and you buy a
perpetual injunction. That is, nobody must even mention that case any longer. I
don’t know any part of the world where that kind of thing happens,” he said.
He lamented
that corruption has eaten so deeply into the country that young people have
been recruited into various corrupt acts, stressing that the attitude of many
Nigerians supports corruption.
"Many
Nigerians do not think seriously about corruption … because they say it is God
that put [the politicians] there; it is their time. That is to say, when I get
there, I too will steal my own.”
Questioning
how corruption can be curbed in a country where the people have such a frame of
mind, he said that for corruption to be eradicated in the country, Nigeria
would have to regain her lost sense of shame, and that Nigerians would have to
be less tolerant of corruption.
He also noted
that corruption goes beyond the political class. “In the past, if anybody associated you with
theft or perjury or fraud, it was as if your family was being inflicted with
leprosy; people would avoid you. Today, they will give you a horse to ride on.”
Speaking on
the rate at which politicians decamp from a party to another, Osundare said the
lack of political ideology in the country is partly responsible for that.
“If you want
to talk about 'ideology,' I think it is the ideology of 'chop, make I chop.' It
is a prodigal, extremely corrupt and corrupting belief system. That is what
constitutes our so-called ideology.”
SAHARAREPORTERS
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