By Olanrewaju Ajao President Muhammadu Buhari Tuesday said some of the looters from the immediate past administration have started returning part of the monies that were stolen.
The President confirmed this in Tehran, capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran at a forum with the Nigerian community in that country,
Buhari, in a question and answer session with the Nigerians, explained that those accused of corruption would have been prosecuted by now but for the need to thoroughly investigate them with a view to gathering enough evidences for their eventual trial.
He said it was easy for him during his tenure as a military Head of State in1985 to arrest and put those allegedly corrupt individuals in protective custody for them to prove their innocence but the dictates of rule of law and due process have slowed him down in prosecuting corruption in this dispensation.
Commenting, Buhari said “On corruption; yes, they are still innocent. But, we are collecting documents and some of them have started voluntarily returning something. But we want all.
When we get those documents we will formally charge them to court and then we will tell Nigerians to know those who abused trust when they are entrusted with public funds. So, the day of reckoning is gradually approaching.”
The President also pledged to deal with saboteurs in the nation’s power sector in order to bring back sanity and service delivery to the populace.
Buhari, who confessed that he has yet to give any direct policy directive on the power sector before the improvement in service experienced in the country in the past few months, said his government would ensure that the needful, especially improvement of security, was done to ensure regular power supply.
He said “I believe if you are in touch back at home you would have been told that already there is some improvement in power.
“We haven’t said anything to them yet. I think they only find it sensible or appropriate for them to try and improve the power.
“I’m sure you know about the privatization of the power sector; your old friends NEPA or Power Holding Company of Nigeria have been sold to a number of interest groups. But, the fundamental thing about us is that we remain potential in everything except performance.
We have a lot of gas, we have a lot of qualified people but again we have a lot of saboteurs who go and blow installations. Those who normally steal Nigerian crude and those who blow up installations, whether they called themselves militants or whatever, they are still there.”
Buhari also told the Nigerian community that his administration was resolute in combating the Boko Haram insurgents even as he assured them that peace would soon return to the troubled North-eastern states of the country.
This is just as he assured the people that his administration would revamp the nation’s educational system from the primary school to the tertiary levels even as he promised to ensure that more Nigerians are sent into Iran on scholarship because of the level of discipline and orderliness of that country.
Meanwhile the Nigerian Charge D’Affairs in Iran, Dr. Ali Magashi, in his remarks told the President that Nigerians in the country were law abiding.
According to him, few Nigerians currently in prison in Iran were drugs couriers who attempted to smuggle banned substances into the country from Afghanistan.
