All Progressives Congress presidential candidate for the 2023 elec, Bola Tinubu, says he will fight corruption like President Muhammadu Buhari did, if elected president.

Mr Tinubu made this promise in his campaign policy document unveiled on Friday by Mr Buhari.

“We will continue the work of the current administration in reforming the civil service to fight corruption, reduce bureaucracy, streamline agencies and decrease inefficiency and waste,” the document reads in part.

Many critics believe Mr Tinubu is corrupt based on his shady antecedents and believe his administration would further entrench official corruption.

The former Lagos governor has consistently dodged queries about the ownership of Alpha Beta, a private company inserted into Lagos laws to perpetually collect tax on behalf of the state for a percentage. 

Mr Tinubu is believed to hold controlling shares in the company which assumed Lagos tax administration under him, and continue to rake in billions of taxpayers money under an opaque system.

Though Mr Buhari touted waging anti-corruption war as a rider into government, his regime has been beset by several corruption scandals which ranged from inflated contracts, certificate forgery among aides to illegal collection from government coffers.

In 2017, Secretary to government of the federation Babachir David Lawal, was fingered in diversion of N544million fund meant to cater for Internally Displaced Persons in terrorism ravaged North-East. Mr Lawal was suspended after much pressure from the then-Senate. His subsequent trial by the EFCC has effectively been inert.  

Similarly, in April 2017, $43 millon slush fund belonging to the NIA was found in a residential apartment at Okoyi, Lagos by EFCC officials. The then NIA boss, Ayo Oke, was sacked with President Buhari vowing that those involved in the IkoyiGate scandal will not go unpunished. Nothing has been heard of the matter till date. 

The Gazette in December 2020 exclusively exposed how top operative in Mr Buhari’s kitchen cabinet, Isa Funtua, got a N840 million windfall from the Federal Inland Revenue Service without any justifiable reason. The government has kept mum on the matter till date. 

Anti-graft agency boss Abdulrasheed Bawa was exposed by The Gazette to have diverted recovered assets in September 2020 when he served as a zonal head of EFCC in Port Harcourt. Mr Buhari overlooked theft to appoint him head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, five months later.