Saraki faults Buhari’s anti-corruption war

• Dogara reveals what Nigeria needs to fight corruption
The President of the Senate, Senator Bukola Saraki, has said that the current anti-corruption war has not “yielded much success” because of too much sensationalism, stressing that the current efforts was as five “minutes sensationalism”.
Speaking on Monday at the ‎launch of a book written by Kogi West Senator, Dino Melaye tagged “The, ‘Antidotes for Corruption: The Nigerian Story’, Saraki said the fight against corruption should focuse on deterrence and not punishment.
The Senate President who agrees that the current government was making effort in forcing back the menace but stressed, “I am convinced that why our fight against corruption has not yielded much success is that we have favoured punishment over deterrence.
“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.‎”
Similarly, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has said that Nigeria needs ‘strong’ institutions to win the war against corruption.
Dogara, in a statement on his website, made it clear that there must be institutional reforms, so that individuals that want to engage in corrupt practices would be stopped.
The statement reads: “As a country, we ran into a situation where corruption was becoming the norm, there was this moral cult that we had created that celebrated corruption.
“The motivation was always there for corruption, but now what is important is not just fighting the old corrupt system. Really, if we must make progress, our focus should be to replace the old order that was corrupt with a new order that makes corruption near impossible to take place.”
The Speaker added: “Corruption, for those who are farmers, is like a tree that grows vigorously. If you end up pruning the trees and not attacking the roots, there is no way you will deal with that thing.
“So, when those who celebrate the successes of the fight against corruption in terms of the high profile investigation, high profile prosecution and even detention, they are missing the point because that is dealing with the symptoms of corruption. That is punishing corruption. But how are we developing remedies that we can apply to ensure that the tree dies?
“Recently, in the labour community, we went for May Day and some of us were nearly held hostage. You can’t blame the workers. While they were agitating for their rights, agitating for minimum wage, some of us are talking about living wage.