President Jonathan hits back at Tumbuwal on corruption remarks

President Jonathan yesterday alleged that corrupt Nigerians are often the ones who openly accuse his government of not fighting corruption. The President made this declaration after swearing in the Chairman and members of the National Population Commission; a member of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission and two special advisers at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.



“Anybody who wants to claim an element of credibility will go to the television and accuse government of corruption, that the President’s body language shows that he is not fighting corruption or that he is not ready to fight corruption," he said.

This statement by President Jonathan is apparently a reaction to the comment made in December last year by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, when the latter delivered a lecture at roundtable, organised by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), to mark the international anti-corruption day. **excerpts from the Speaker's lecture below:

In some cases, you have the government setting up new committees to duplicate the job already done by the parliament. Take the bulletproof cars case, the NSA, with all the security challenges confronting the country, should not be burdened with a job that can best be handled by the anti-corruption agencies.

The government has no business setting up any administrative committee in a case that is clear to all Nigerians. What the president should have done was to explicitly direct the EFCC to probe the matter. With such directives coming from the president, I am sure we still have good people in EFCC who can do a good job.

By the action of setting up different committees for straightforward cases, the president's body language doesn't tend to support the fight against corruption

Jonathan accused his critics of making such statements in order to gain cheap credibility. The President said, “Anybody who wants to claim an element of credibility will go to the television and accuse government of corruption, that the President’s body language shows that he is not fighting corruption or that he is not ready to fight corruption.

“Sometimes, even the very corrupt people are those making these statements because if you attack government, you are insulated, you become an angel.

“If you want to be an angel, just attack the government, whatever you have done is covered.”