The former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Monday charged President Muhammadu Buhari to take his anti-corruption campaign beyond embezzlement.
Jega, who superintended over the 2015 elections that produced Buhari as president, also accused members of the National Assembly of seeking for bribes to carry out their constitutional duties.
He specifically charged President Buhari to beam his anti-corruption searchlight on National Assembly committee chairmen who asked for bribe to pass budgets of Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and when they go on oversight function.
Speaking while delivering the year’s Democracy Day lecture at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, on Monday, Jega said he has “spoken to quite a number of chief executives who complained of high demand for bribes from members of the National Assembly in the name of so called oversight functions.”
The professor of Political Science, told the gathering, including President Muhammadu Buhari, Senate President Bukola Saraki, Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen and other top government personalities that “some chairmen of committees at the National Assembly are notorious for seeking for bribes.”
Also calling for total reform of the public service, the ex-INEC chief urged the present administration to avoid the fire brigade approach in handling the herdsmen/farmers crises among other security challenges in the country.
He also said that INEC is presently facing challenges that could mar the 2019 general election, stressing that one of the challenges is violence, saying that inability of the political parties to peacefully carry out internal elections will rub off on the 2019 elections when parties need to contend with one another.