Anti-corruption fight must start within the government – Prince Adebayo

Emmanuel Alfred

The Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party, Prince Adewole Adebayo has said that for the fight against corruption in Nigeria to be successful, it needs to start from inside the government.

Prince Adewole was speaking at the Centre for Awareness on Justice and Accountability (CAJA) Integrity Award Public Lecture, which held on Thursday, December 14 in Kano State.
The event which was themed ‘Promoting Integrity as a way of Fighting Corruption’ was organized by CAJA in collaboration with The Penlight Center.
The legal luminary said that his party will change the mode of fighting corruption, as Nigeria has been getting it wrong all these while.

He said, “We are getting something wrong in Nigeria; government cannot fight corruption from outside but can only fight corruption inside the government.”
He further noted that there is a need to watch out for the institutions used to fight corruption because corruption is capable of capturing institutions.
“Corruption is dangerous to institutions; any institution that you can use to fight corruption, corruption will capture it. So we must watch out for institutions, including religious institutions”.
“The thieves sit in the front and the hard working people sit at the back when you go to the mosque or you go to the Church. So you have to make sure these institutions are not captured”, Prince Adewole said.
He further said that the government must be willing to keep policemen with integrity at the top in order to help tackle the problem of corruption.
“There’s a fight between the police and the government – a good police knows that people in government will go to jail, that is why they look around to look for bad policemen to put on top of the good policemen”.