President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday said he has no corrupt men in his cabinet as widely belived by Nigerians.
One name that kept recurring is that of Transportation minister, Rotimi Amaechi, who has a huge graft charge around his neck courtesy a probe panel in his home state.
He maintained that he has no one facing judicial probe, or facing graft charges in his cabinet, and that his anti corruption has been selective.
“if any Nigerian has evidence of corruption against any of them, he should go to court”, he spoke during the presidential media chat in Abuja.
“I have been a democrat since 2002. I don’t think I tolerate corruption. I don’t think I have picked anybody that I know will embarrass my government. But if you have got evidence on any of my ministers, it is your right as a Nigerian citizen to tell them that you don’t want a, b or c in the cabinet because they have got a case in court. I don’t think I picked anybody as a minister who has a case of corruption in court”, he said.
Asked how the country is doing in the fight against corruption, Buhari said: “I think we are doing quite well, considering the circumstances. First, this will be best illustrated by my personal experience. 30 years ago when I was in uniform as Head of State of Nigeria, we arrested people who were perceived to be corrupt and put them in protective custody and we told them they were guilty until they could prove themselves innocent.
Now I am here in a different form, in a multi-party democratic system and the nations we are looking forward to for cooperation, under the circumstances we found ourselves in security wise and economy wise. The only acceptable decision to them is those suspected to be corrupt are innocent until they are proven guilty.
“Having said that, we have been lucky to find some documents where public funds were diverted to personal pockets. We have some documents where Nigerian crude oil was lifted illegally and the proceeds were put into personal accounts instead of the federal government account and of course, we have started going to court. We got evidence and we are taking the people to court and whatever is in the court, we will not comment until we see what they do with the documents we presented. There are terrible cases of corruption and we can only appeal to Nigerians to be patient”, he said.
Buhari tried to justify his unwillingness to publicly declare his assets as promised during campaign.
He said ” i have declared my assets four times”
On the issue foreign exchange crunch and the policy that has outlawed the use of bank cards abroad he said, ” i am not aware the banks don’t have foreign exchange for those who want to do business. I will ask the CBN governor. We have cases where people use multiple cards to take money out using agents?”
On Chibok girls, contrary to its party promise to bring back the girls, Buhari said his administration has no concrete intelligence on their whereabouts.
“We have no intelligence on that but we ready to negotiate with the credible leaders of Boko Haram without conditions.
