President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday said his administration’s strategy against corruption was to strengthen the capability of institutions to nip the menace in the bud.He said his idea of anti-corruption war was not about arresting suspects and parading them on the television.He admitted that the two main problems currently confronting the country were insecurity and corruption.
The President said his administration was making efforts to tackle the challenges.
“There are two main problems confronting us as a nation: The issue of insecurity in the North where we have the Boko Haram terrorists and in the South where we have commercial kidnapping. The next thing that people worry about after security is the issue of corruption.
We are coming out with programmes and plans to clean up. These are things that you don’t just use a magical wand to wave off, otherwise even before I became the President, there wouldn’t have been corruption in Nigeria.It is not just about shouting corruption. It is not about looking at one person, arrest the person and show him on television.It is about strengthening institutions and coming up with credible plans to make sure that anybody who gets involved with corruption, the system must have a way of detecting him and punishing him.Until you put such a system on ground, you cannot talk about eradicating corruption, you will just be celebrating corruption.”
On security challenges, Jonathan said the Federal Government was working hard to restore peace to the country.
He noted that the festive period had been relatively peaceful due to prayers and government’s efforts.
The President said, “You would have noticed that from Christmas to New Year, at least, it has been calm. It did not happen by accident.It happened because you have been praying for this country and the government has also been doing something. We do not need to announce what we are doing.With your prayers, we will surely get there. We will continue to come up with programmes that will help the ordinary people. The same way we won the war against Ebola, we shall win the terror war.”
Again, Jonathan described 2015 as a turning point in the history of the country because of the forthcoming general elections.