Mr. President, You Dine With Corruption – Open Letter To President Buhari

By Chima Amadi

Your Excellency,

Naturally, conventional wisdom and etiquette will require that I start by expressing my happiness for the safe return of your son, Yusuf, from his medical sojourn. However, I am constrained to hold my horses in that regard for like everything now surrounding you there is no clarity as to the status of that journey. First, patriotic tales of how you have placed the young man’s fate in the hands of Nigeria’s quirky medical expertise and facility regaled us, then later, an announcement of a successful surgery and discharge was made to the delight of a relieved nation. Sir, you can pardon my reticence in not going the courteous route when all that drivel from your handlers is just that; yet, another mishandled spin. Yusuf had been in Germany all along. Given this deception, I beg your indulgence to skip niceties and to proceed right to the crux of this open letter.

*President Buhari 

Why an open letter to you? As I read the drab defence of your government’s anti-corruption credentials by your Media Team in reaction to Transparency International’s 2018 Corruption Perception Index(CPI) which scored Nigeria poorly, I was left to wonder if that was the quality of advice you were getting. Admittedly, against the backdrop of efforts by the EFCC to ratchet up the public show of force against corruption, you have every reason to wonder why the rankings would suggest that Nigeria’s corruption perception has regressed under your watch. While your angst would not be misplaced, it was the duty of your trusted aides to tell you the truth about the situation and why we would continue to be perceived as one of the most corrupt places on earth irrespective of the uncoordinated, incoherent and tactless efforts of the nation’s leading anti-corruption agency.