News — Hive

"Perhaps Buhari never had any integrity to start with. It was our desperation for a hero that caused us to dress him in borrowed robes. What man of integrity would lie that he took a bank loan to buy his presidential nomination form while two of his children were enrolled in a United Kingdom university? What man of integrity would have a multimillion-naira house in Abuja but lied that he had modest houses only in Daura, Kaduna, and Kano? What man of integrity would be afraid to publicly and transparently declare his assets after promising to do so? What man of integrity chooses to be the sole signatory to his presidential campaign’s bank account to which millions of poor, struggling Nigerians donated tens of millions of naira and not give an account of how he spent the money? What man of integrity perpetually surrounds himself with corrupt people and, worse still, defends their corruption?

People who are intimate with President Buhari told me several months ago in the heat of my unrestrained enthusiasm over his emergence as president that he was morally and temperamentally unsuited to fight corruption. They said the undue premium the president places on ‘personal loyalty’ causes him to ignore, excuse, and even defend the corruption of his close associates. I was regaled with troubling tales of the mind-boggling corruption against close, loyal aides that he swept under the carpet at the PTF (Petroleum Trust Fund), The Buhari Organisation, and at the defunct CPC (Congress for Progressive Change). They say likes attract. You can’t be a man of integrity and continually surround yourself with corrupt people. I can go on; but it is obvious that Buhari isn’t the man of integrity he has been alleged to be"