According to renowned law professor Itse Sagay (SAN), President Muhammadu Buhari has an unrivaled record of fighting corruption.
The legal eminence claimed that in 1984, during the Buhari military regime, any administration had come closest to combating corruption.
“The level of intervention in the fight against corruption is unprecedented. This government has broken new grounds and records in the fight against corruption.
“Since independence, no government has performed anywhere near this government in anti-corruption efforts.
“I’ve been around since the 1960s, so I know. This needs to be acknowledged and appreciated,” Sagay said.
Sagay discussed the work of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), a think tank that he chairs, at a media discussion in Lagos. PACAC was established by President Buhari at the start of his administration.
The distinguished lawyer noted that it is difficult to combat corruption, which he described as widespread.
He claimed that the Buhari administration has institutionalized procedures to support transparency and accountability in the management of public funds with the help of PACAC.
Sagay said: “Under Buhari, phenomenally highest rate and quantity of looted assets have been recovered. There has been by far the highest rate of convictions, which has quadrupled.
“Policies, such as the Bank Verification Number (BVN), Treasury Single Account (TSA), and the Whistle Blowing policy were introduced and have severely curtailed corruption.
“There was a vigorous intervention to stop the P&ID colossal fraud of $9 billion. The fuel subsidy scam was halted. The over N1 trillion recovered loot was not re-looted but was put back into the budget and the Social Investment Programme (SIPs).
“This is utilised for the N-Power programme for which trainees get N30,000 stipends and interest-free loans of N50,000 to N350,000.
“There is also the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme involving 9.9 million children in primaries one to three in 58,000 primary schools, with over 107,000 cooks engaged to deliver nutritious meals; and the conditional cash transfer.”
The PACAC chairman said the Buhari administration had utilised the non-conviction-based asset forfeiture strategy to recover stolen funds and assets, adding that this had initiated the probe of major agencies, such as the forensic audit of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
According to him, PACAC has helped to build the capacity of anti-graft agencies by engaging globally-renown experts to design manuals on investigations, asset recovery, and sentencing, among others.
“We trained judges, right from the Supreme Court to the lower courts. We brought in United Nations experts on loot recovery to train judges on non-conviction asset recovery because we realise that the pain of separation of loot from looters is great,” Sagay said.
The eminent lawyer expressed the belief that sustained effort was required to fight graft and liberate the country’s resources “from the greed of the tiny elite”.
The PACAC chairman said he does not harbour any concerns about whether President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration would sustain the anti-graft war.
Sagay recalled that under Tinubu as Lagos State governor with current Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) as the then Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, acts of corruption were not tolerated, and anyone, including judges, found wanting, were fired.
He said the attacks and mudslinging against Tinubu were mostly political, stressing that he did not believe they would “dampen his zeal to fight corruption”.
Sagay said one of such sources of attacks was the bullion van seen being driven into the former Lagos governor’s home in 2019.
“Every private individual can hire a bullion van. It’s not an offence. We cannot use that against him.
“I don’t expect any toning down in the fight against corruption under Tinubu,” Sagay said.
A PACAC member, Prof. Etannibi Alemika, while responding to a question, said the committee was not happy with the pardon granted to former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye and his Taraba counterpart, Jolly Nyame.
