8th December, 2017
Say No Campaign, a coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on Friday called on Nigerians to pressurise the Federal Government to ensure that corrupt officials faced the consequences of their actions.
The group made the call at a rally it organised in Abuja as part of activities marking the 2017 International Anti-Corruption Day.
Addressing the audience, one of the conveners of the campaign, Mr Jaye Gaskiya, said that it was time for Nigerians to collectively defeat corruption.
According to Gaskiya, we are saying enough is enough; we are saying that all hands must be on deck to fight corruption because it is not the president’s fight alone or that of any political parties.
“It ought to be the fight of Nigerian people and there are corrupt people in every sector even in the presidency; so, it is up to us as citizens to ensure that every act of corruption is exposed.
“We all need to put pressure on the relevant authorities to ensure that corrupt people face the consequences of their actions.
“When someone who is in charge of a Federal Medical Centre steals money meant for capital projects or equipment and women die during child birth, his is not only guilty of corruption but also of murder.
“There is no doubt in our own minds that the person who stole that money for the equipment that was not there to save life is guilty,’’ he said.
Gaskiya said that corruption was the reason why people could not feed their kids, and the reason why elderly people who served the country for 35 years had not been paid their gratuity and pension.
He said that one of the ways Nigerians could reclaim their citizenship was to ensure that not a single penny of the nation’s resources found its way into private pockets or bank accounts.
Another convener, Mr Ezenwa Nwagwu, said that the march from Unity Fountain to the Federal Secretariat was to encourage Nigerians to own the fight against corruption and see it as a collective work.
Nwagwu said that the group’s interest was to demystify the fact that the fight against corruption was one man’s fight.
“This is because it is easy in Nigeria to build a personality cult around the anti-corruption fight; it is easy to make the anti-corruption fight a cliché.
“So you hear the government saying every time that it wants to fight corruption but the truth of the matter is that it is in the Constitution that it is the role of the government to abolish it.
“So, when the government says it is fighting corruption, it is not doing anybody a favour, the consequence of corruption is upon us, its effect is upon us.
`When you hear that billions of naira is stolen, it means there are no drugs in the hospital, it means that citizens cannot have jobs; they will sell recharge cards.
“It means that our industries will not work and Ajaokuta, Oshogbo and Aladja Steel Rolling Mills will never come to life,’’ he said.
He said that Ajaokuta mill alone could employ 17, 000 engineers, adding that “if you take 17,000 engineers off the unemployment market, that is a respectable self-esteem kind of job but corruption has hampered that’’.
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Nwagwu said that if corruption was not fought, there would not be any university in Nigeria that would be among the first 1000 in the world.
He urged Nigerians to get up and join “Say No Campaign’’ to do their generational duty as citizens to expose corruption and support everyone fighting it.
The President, Project Hope Alive, Mr Chibuzo Okereke, said that corruption was neither a game nor a process but a human being.
Okereke said that this was the reason Nigerians died on highways due to bad roads and more than 48 per cent of the youths remained unemployed.
He said that out of 70 million youths in Nigeria, 40 million of them were unemployed, adding that “today we are standing in solidarity as young people to create awareness of the dangers of corruption.
“We are talking about taking action wherever we are and stop celebrating unexplained wealth because we don’t need people who caused our problem to become our role models.
“We need to ask questions on transparency and accountability, and ensure that people are responsibly accountable for the things they have done.
“So, today after the march, we must have it on our subconscious that we must do this for Nigeria because Nigeria needs us today than ever.