Human rights activist and constitutional lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN) yesterday said that the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has worsened Nigeria’s pitiable economic condition and socio-political woes.
Ozekhome, who presented a detailed analysis of how corruption, money laundering and insecurity have destroyed the nation’s economic potentials among the comity of nations, added that something should be done urgently to rescue the nation from total collapse.
He spoke while delivering a keynote address at the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Barnawa, Kaduna Branch Law week.
He also urged patriotic legal practitioners and other Nigerians to join hands together in salvaging Nigeria from corruption, insecurity and money laundering that are threatening the survival of Nigeria as a country.
Ozekhome said: “It is embarrassingly painful to be told that your country is corrupt—worse still, that your culture enables or even approves corruption.
“Around the world, people talk about corrupt cultures, implying a predisposition for a group of people to behave in corrupt ways and perhaps leading to the conclusion that fighting corruption entails cultural change.
“Corruption is eating deep into the fabric of Nigeria. It has defied every attempt at eradicating it. The level of criminal activities spurred by corruption and witnessed in the country is on a geometrical ascendance today.”
He also argued that nepotism had sustained a culture of mediocrity, gross incompetence and inefficiency in public and civil service, pointing out that this culture has been enthroned at the expense of other prudent, resourceful and competent Nigerians who epitomize the ideal opposite of what corruption stands for.
“It is very difficult to find an institution in Nigeria today that is exempted from this malaise,” he said.
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