Akwa Ibom declares support for Buhari’s anti-graft war

Akwa Ibom State Governor Udom Emmanuel, Monday, expressed support for the President Muhammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption war, stating that if the country must move forward Nigerians must join in the fight.

Describing the ongoing anti-graft war as a fantastic endeavour, Emmanuel noted it was essential to put in place strong institutional structures to fight corruption as well as structures that would enable systems to run effectively without interference.

Fielding questions from journalists at the State House, Abuja, the governor explained that corruption had become endemic in the country yet it was being looked at in terns of magnitude.

“Why can’t we start looking at ourselves? Let’s start from even you as a person. What is corruption? It’s not only when money exchanges hand that is corruption. Somebody trying to influence an unjust cause, it’s corruption one-way or the other. Corruption is a broad concept, if you have N10 at hand and you’re not honest about it, you will never be honest about it when you have N10 million at hand. So, corruption has a lot of ramifications. So, corruption is not in terms of the magnitude. It is core value system that really needs to be analysed. We strongly support the fight against corruption,” he said.

He said governors in the country were waging the same war in their different domains, and trying to set up structures that could “minimise, at least, if not possible to deal with it overnight to eliminate them. But at least, we must deal with corruption even to the barest minimum.”

Reacting to the pending case at the Supreme Court in which the APC candidate, Umana O. Umana, is challenging his election victory, Emmanuel said he’d rather not comment on an ongoing case to avoid running contrary to the dictates of separation of powers.

“Unfortunately, in a democratic setting, the executive, the judiciary and the legislature, they have different functions. You know, it’s like a rat and a lizard, they might be running towards the same direction but they run different races. I don’t think as someone who’s running a different arm of governor I am supposed to speak about other arms,” he said.