Obiageli Ezekwesili is yet to hear the last on her Aljazeera interview during which she declined from calling her former boss, Olusegun Obasanjo 'corrupt'. Moses E. Ochonu in his article titled 'Ezekwesili’s Disappointing Outing On Obasanjo And Corruption' posted on SAHARA REPORTERS has stated reasons why Obasanjo is corrupt.     

I am a huge fan of Obiageli Oby Ezekwesili, but I have said elsewhere that my problem with her loud, anti-corruption activism is that it is strangely amnesiac and hypocritical. Even as she proclaims herself a one-woman transparency police, she inadvertently advertises the contradictions of the Obasanjo government, in which she served. I admire her personal integrity and sincerely believe that she is incorruptible.

However, when you go around self-righteously castigating the corruption of the present government without even a perfunctory acknowledgement of, or an effort to explain your failure to prevent or punish, the corruption of the government for which you were supposed to act as gatekeeper for public procurement and contracts (the primary conduit for political and bureaucratic corruption in Nigeria), your rhetoric rings hollow and raises questions about the sincerity and consistency of your moral indignation at malfeasance. It is only a matter of time before such duplicity is exposed, and Ezekwesili’s moment of exposure came in her interview with Mehdi Hasan on Al-Jazeera, which has now gone viral.

It was under Ezekwesili’s superintending eyes that many corruption scandals occurred, including the grand larceny of expending $16 billion or $10 billion (depending on who you believe) on contracts in the power sector only to have the contracts abandoned or left undone while the contractors, who were connected to Obasanjo and other politicians of his government, pocketed their loots. It was under her watch as enforcer of transparency in the Due Process Office that Obasanjo acquired his 600 million Naira shares in Transcorp as a incumbent president and, after public outcry, declared farcically that he had lodged the shares in a blind trust, never mind the unanswered question of how he got the money to purchase the shares and of the ethical propriety of acquiring shares in an enterprise set up, capitalized, and privileged by your own government.

It was while Ezekwesili was in the Due Process Office that Obasanjo smuggled dollars in Andy Ubah's private jet into the USA, the interception of which caused so much brouhaha he had to reluctantly own up to the money, claiming it was meant for the purchase of equipment for his farm in Otta. It was during Ezekwesili’s tenure as due process chief that Obasanjo fraudulently and corruptly raised billions of Naira for his presidential library project, for which the late Gani Fawehinmi took him to court. It was while she held watch that Obasanjo started building his multi-billion Naira Bells University, and it was during the same period that his bankrupt farm experienced a miraculous turnaround and started generating $30 million monthly according to one of his aides.

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SOURCE: #SaharaReporters