Message: We No Longer Need These Jokers In Power —Ribadu

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Former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nuhu Ribadu, said Nigeria is suffering from collapsed institutions and needed more than mere change of leadership to survive.

He also said hurdles were placed on his way to fight corruption when he was appointed as pioneer chairman of the anti-graft agency under the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.

Continue After The Break.

Ribadu, who spoke at a mentoring session with corps members in Abuja, likened Nigeria to a man “who sows maize grains yet expects to reap mango fruits.”

He said and I quote: “Our trouble in this country is principally the collapse of our institutions. Our potential is lost in our civic decadence, which stares us in the face wherever we go. We see the decadence in the eyes of the policeman flipping through our particulars; we see the decadence in the eyes of the university registrar demanding bribes to grant or facilitate admissions; we see the decadence in the eyes of every citizen who has lost hope in Nigeria.”

Ribadu, who said he rejected offers from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Afribank, Corporate Affairs Commission, United Bank for Africa and a family business to pick-up a career in Police, maintained that he had no regrets for his actions as the EFCC boss.

He advised the corps members to be the change agents the country needed.

Ribadu said, “To inspire change you must become something different; do something worthy of emulation, something whose memory even comforts you no matter what.”

“My appointment as chairman of the EFCC, for instance, was to a turbulent task. I had to follow the statements of my previously written will to serve in a country where, there is a lack of functional institutions to check mismanagement of public funds and related criminal misconduct. Trust in public institutions had been demolished and perpetrators went about wearing their crimes like badges of honour.

“I was given an appointment to stand in the way of these celebrated fraudsters, without an office and funds to launch my operations. But we went on to form what became a prime anti-corruption body in the country. Our activities are left for history and honest critics of political evolution to gauge and tell of our impact.”