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Defend Allegations Against You, TMG Tells Saraki

September 17, 2015

"When it happens to a big man, they say it is a witch-hunt. But people forget that if there is no witch there would be no hunter. So they go together," Chairman of TMG said.

The Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) has asked the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to defend allegations leveled against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau.

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The group said it was unfortunate that instead of defending himself, the former Governor of Kwara State has resorted to making allegations that he was being hunted.

TMG, in a state of the nation address by its chairman, Comrade Ibrahim Zikirullahi in Abuja on Thursday, expressed support for the on going campaign against corruption by President Muhamadu Buhari, Sikirullahi said, "the case involving Saraki is part of the fight against corrupt practices. We are seeing for the first time that an untouchable is being touched. 

"When it happens to a big man, they say it is a witch-hunt. But people forget that if there is no witch there would be no hunter. So they go together. 

"It is left to Saraki to prove his innocence in the court. This is also a wake up call to our political office holders that nobody would be spared if he has skeleton in his cupboard. 

"We should not frustrate the change we are seeing now. We all saw how our judiciary became a cash and carry judiciary. We all saw how they were dishing out black market judgments in recent time."

He said that that there is a refreshing breath of positive changes in the polity as a result of actions of the President. 

Zikirullahi called on the President to remain steadfast in his determination to fight corruption, adding that the anti-graft agencies should take the fight to all those who have "desecrated the public space through criminal conversion of government resources for private gain. "

He said that the introduction of the treasury single account would guarantee transparency in the management of the nation's resources.

According to him, "For once in the checkered history of governance in our country, Nigerians can today go to bed without the fear of waking up to news of scandalous disappearance of substantial chunks of the national treasury as a result of the activities of thieving government officials. 

"Critical national institutions that had gone to sleep at the height of indolent governance have suddenly woken up. Slowly and steadily, sanity is being restored, at least at the federal level, to nation that had completely lost its moral compass. The framework for accountability and transparency in governance are being erected." 

He said the TMG was in support of the creation of special courts to try those who looted the nation's treasury over the years, saying that regular courts have become cash and carry judicial settings. 

He said, "in the last decades, cases of corruption taken before regular Nigerian courts by anti-graft agencies have largely been thrown out on the grounds off frivolous technicalities. 

"It was in this country that a court threw over 100 count charge against a certain James Onanafe Ibori, former Governor of Delta states, only for the cause of justice to be served on him by the British judicial system. Today a man exonerated by the Nigerian judicial system is cooling his heels in a UK prison. 
"The Ibori story powerfully illustrates why president Buhari needs to work with the chief justice of Nigeria (CJN) to set up the special courts and get fearless, courageous and untainted judges to try looters of our Commonwealth."