The 2019 presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has said the war on corruption by the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government is selective, saying his government will use technology to end corruption if elected.
Mr Sowore, who spoke during a TV programme tagged “Roadmap 2019” on Channels TV on Monday night, said he will use ‘digital tools ‘ to win the war against corruption.
He questioned the current anti-corruption war saying it was a joke.
“The moment you are in APC, you are sanctified and the moment you are out of the APC, suddenly your corruption record makes it to the surface,” the Sahara Reporters publisher noted. “They are just playing with our minds because we are not delivering consequences on the corrupt people the way it should.”
Comparing Nigeria to the United States of America (USA), where he resided, Mr Sowore said: “in the U.S., even when you are pleading innocence, there has to be documentation to show that this is what you said and can be made available to the public. We don’t do that here and that why the corruption war in Nigeria is a joke.
“We will use technology to ensure that so many of the things we are still hard-coding now will be digitalised, including the contracting system. For example, every form that is signed by public office holder in Nigeria through the code of conduct bureau should be available to public,” he said.
He gave further details on how he hopes to curb graft if elected.
“We should be able to search everybody that is on Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)… Who has a company in the country so that when a contract is awarded to somebody and he has a 9-year-old boy in the board of their company, we can find out immediately.
“If somebody is declaring asset he doesn’t have, when you ‘download’ them, you will be able to question the person and raise the alarm,” he explained.
Speaking on why he is running for the presidency, instead of contesting for a local position as he has been challenged in the past, Mr Sowore said: “When a country is rotten, you cannot fix it by going to the local government.
“When nations have problems that are created by the very top, you solve them by starting at the very top. If you want to make an impact or when nations are looking for people to change their countries, they look for people who are the best to start at the top because the top is the most important part of a political system,” he said.
He said he has never “been disengaged from politics” bue has “just not been playing partisan politics”.
The presidential election is scheduled to hold on February 16, 2019.
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