Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto, on Wednesday, February, 21, 2018, gave a damning report on the anti-corruption war of the present administration.,
He declared that in spite of the effort being made by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, cases of corruption were still very high in the country.
Abubakar, who is also the chairman, Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, NSCIA, made this known in Abuja, at the presentation of a book, ‘Dynamics of Revealed Knowledge and Human Science’, written in honour of Ishaq Oloyede, the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Examination, JAMB.
According to the Sultan, the level of corruption was taking a dangerous dimension because most Nigerians at the epicentre of power were not committed to the anti-graft war but were only concerned with their selfish interests.
“Corruption is at a very high level and its left for us to fight it to its terminal end. We shall not just sit down and be thinking that things are okay, things are not okay. We have said it so many times but it is left for us to sit together and find out ways and means of getting things back on track in this blessed country.”
“The snake issue has been such a humorous thing that cartoons are centred around it. It is humorous but it is a sad reality of our country. Where is our moral values? Somebody just gets up, takes government’s money and goes away and nobody challenges him? Why do people do things with impunity?
“It’s a joke snake swallowed N36 million maybe in dollars, but the reality is facing us and the earlier we do something about it the better for us. Let’s not sing further, things are bad,” he said.
The Sultan further lamented the decline of moral values in the society and accused politicians of capitalising on the general insecurity across the country, especially the herdsmen killings, to boost their political ego.
“Nowadays, we don’t have statesmen. We have men of states because people are aligned with their state and embrace their religion more than Nigeria. We have governors that only see their immediate environment as their own constituency and if you don’t belong to their tribal or ethnic background, you are finished.”
“Our moral values has gone so low. We don’t have a sense of right or wrong. People talk anyhow they want to. People use people’s life to have political stand. It’s wrong. Don’t you know people are dying every day but you as the governor, as the Councillor, as the President, as the Chairman, as Minister, you are under very tight security in the country you don’t feel anything. But the common man out there is being killed every day. Tens and hundreds are being killed every day in the name of economic survival.”
The Sultan cautioned government and religious leaders to advise the citizenry to desist from criminalising a particular ethnic group for peace and stability to reign in the country.
According to him, that the killer herdsmen crisis must be devoid of religious or ethnic stereotyping as branding a people in negative colors could trigger more crisis.
“Nowadays, the worst word you can hear is Fulani. There are millions of Fulanis who do not know what a cow is. I am a very proud Fulani but I was never a herder but everybody when they see a Fulani man, he is a killer. It’s not true. There are so many non Fulani’s that are herdsmen. Millions of them. So, to stereotype a particular ethnicity as a criminal is wrong.”
The monarch commended Oloyede for living an honest and incorruptible life worthy of emulation and urged the government to honour the great achievement of Nigerians while they were still alive, rather than waiting until they were dead to name structures after them.
