Nigeria’s best anti-corruption fight happened under Buhari…

INDEPENDENT 

Professor Itsey Sagay, former chairman of Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) under former President Buhari, in this interview with CHIBUIKE CHUKWU, speaks on the fight against corruption under Buhari, the 2023 general elections, the judiciary as well as Tinubu’s mistakes leading to sufferings being experienced by Nigerians, among other issues. 

 As former chairman of Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) under former President Buhari, to what extent did the regime fight corruption given that the last administration is regarded as one of the most corrupt? 

I’m happy you said so many believed because the belief that Buhari’s administration was full of corruption is not true. I say this because under the Buhari’s administration, Nigeria witnessed the greatest and most successful fight against corruption in the history of this country. I know for certain that under Buhari’s government, convictions for corruption rose from less than three hundred to well over three thousand under his command. And not only that, in the fight against corruption, we added a feature that had never been added before in the fight against graft. We introduced the concept of non-conviction asset recovery because we found that when you have to prove that the person is guilty of corruption or of looting and you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt and you have already senior advocates who are paid from the proceeds of crime and invested in protecting the crime, it will be challenging. We adopted a different method in order to succeed in the major part of the struggle. That is by bringing an action to recover the money or property they have looted rather than bringing criminal action against them. When you bring the action against the money they looted or the property, then proof is not beyond reasonable doubt; so the proof is much lower. Now all you have to do is to gather all the property, seize them, control them and ask anybody who claims to own them to come to court within fourteen days and prove how they acquired them. That was something new introduced by the Buhari government and under it, well over a trillion naira assets were recovered including what Diezani is struggling to get back now. Did you know Diezani has so many houses, so many expensive watches, jewelry and all that? It was through the same action we took under the same Buhari’s government that led to the discovery of all those things. We seized them and asked her to come and prove how she got the money to buy them and she has not been able to do that. So those who keep on saying that corruption increased under the Buhari government are saying so for the fun of it. They are not serious and I see that they are saying that out of animosity. They are irresponsible and are talking nonsense for the pleasure of it without actually knowing how corruption was fought then. The Buhari government achieved a lot in the fight against corruption. It introduced so many new things like anti money laundering, cybercrime and a whole lot of that, all aimed at stopping crime…