A frontline pro-democracy think tank, the Centre for
Democracy and Development (CDD) on Friday listed what it called some
shortcomings of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in the last
five years.
CDD observed some “gaps” in the implementation of the
anti-corruption programme of Buhari’s administration.
CDD berated Buhari for his alleged tendency to condone
corruption within his own administration and party, the All Progressives
Congress, APC.
In a report by its Director, Idayat Hassan, the body claimed
Buhari has consistently turned blind eyes to allegations against some of his
appointees.
The report reads: “Consequently, the assessment knocks the
President for his tendency to condone corruption
within his own administration and the ruling All
Progressives Congress (APC) party. In this
regard, President Buhari gets the flak over accusations that
he consistently turned a blind eye
to malfeasance by some of his own appointees and resisted
independent oversight of Nigeria’s
most scandal-ridden agencies.”
“The report notes the untenable situation wherein the
“Buhari cabinet includes several individuals tainted by accusations of
corruption. It went on to document that in the five years under review, the APC
nominated, while the President personally campaigned for many notorious
kleptocrats.”
On the vexed issue of opaque use of security votes, CDD
berated Buhari’s administration for using corruption-prone slush funds.
CDD knocked the President for failure to curb defence and
security corruption.
It said: “The assessment asserts that expenditures in the
defence and security sector continue to escape public and legislative scrutiny,
and mostly occur under emergency procurement processes that lack basic
anti-corruption safeguards. The government was similarly
called out over the continued the practice of awarding crude oil lifting
contracts to middlemen firms, including those implicated in the 2010 fuel
subsidy fraud scandal.”
Another shortcoming identified by the five year assessment
of CDD was the failure of the government to
achieve the required reforms in the petroleum sector.
“President Buhari who doubles as the Minister of Petroleum
Resources, the assessment avers bears personal responsibility for his
government’s failure to undertake basic, and long overdue, reforms to the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
“Widely seen as one of the most corrupt and mismanaged
national oil companies in the world, the NNPC continues to conceal illicit
financial outflows from public or legislative scrutiny, inflate internal
administrative budgets and withhold oil revenues from the national treasury,”
the report said.
Added to the other shortcomings outlined in the assessment,
is the issue of declining fiscal
transparency on the watch of the President.
The assessment noted that “the Central Bank of
Nigeria, CBN, exemplifies this shortcoming as it has become
less transparent and more vulnerable to political influence on fiscal and
monetary policy.”
It bemoaned the situation wherein “the bank’s oversight role
has diminished and the relationship between it and the nation’s commercial
banks has become too cozy. Since 2015, sales of discounted foreign
exchange to privileged recipients have become more opaque
than ever before.”
Among other recommendations, the report called on the
government to take practical steps to improve transparency and accountability
in the budgeting, expenditure and contracting processes.
The body recommended that government officials and ruling
party politicians exerting pressure on anti-corruption agencies and judiciary
over corruption cases involving them, be
decisively sanctioned.
Just yesterday, the Presidency had listed some of Buhari’s
achievements in the last five years.
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