The Senate President, Bukola Saraki on Monday observed that the fight against corruption being waged by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has not “yielded much success”.
He explained that this is because the anti-graft crusade is rippled with sensationalism, describing the present approach to the fight as one that is all about five-minute sensationalism.
The Senate President spoke at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua centre in Abuja during the launch of ‘Antidotes for Corruption: The Nigerian Story’, a book written by the lawmaker representing Kogi west, Dino Melaye.
Noting however that the current government was making effort in forcing back corrupt practices, he advised the fight should be focused on deterrence and not punishment.
Saraki said, “I am convinced that why our fight against corruption has not yielded much success is that we have favoured punishment over deterence.
”We must review our approaches by building our institutions to make it difficult for people to carry out corrupt practices.
“It is my view that the key area of prevention, we must work on, is to make it difficult for stolen money to find a home.
“We must fight corruption with sincerity, and not fight symptoms. Unlike the five-minute sensationalism we have now, it must not be based on individuals but on institutions.
“Let us fight corruption with sincerity. If we fight corruption in a corrupt way, we will not make any headway.”
Speaking earlier, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, called for a preventive approach to fighting corruption.
He said prosecuting high profile cases of corruption was only worsening the problem, and not dealing with its root cause.
According to him, “The fight against corruption should be the moral responsibility of all Nigerians because it affects everybody.
“We ran into a situation where corruption was celebrated. When there are prosecution of high profile cases, we are only punishing corruption, but we are not dealing with the root cause of it. We must make the practice of corruption very difficult.”
Also speaking at the event, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Na’Abba, reasoned that corruption is symptomatic of the failure of leadership in the country.
He observed that the definition of corruption is usually coloured by ethnic and religious sentiments.
His words, “There is no consensus on what constitutes corruption most definitions of corruption in Nigeria have been subjective.
“Corruption is not only in matters of finance, corruption also means deviance. It is simply a failure of leadership. It is social deviance. Nepotism, stealing and all social deviance is corruption.”
The book launch was also attended by the wife of former president Goodluck Jonathan, Patience, and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Mohammed Bello