The governorship candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 2019 election in Lagos State, Chief Owolabi Salis has advised president Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the need to give priority to the fight against the menace of corruption in the country.
The politician cum Lawyer based in the United States braced up with every available weapon at his disposal to tackle what he described as the festering sore of corruption, ravaging the fabric of the nation’s economy.
He explained that the greatest problem which had devastated the nation right from independence, and had brought the general mass of the people, especially the poor, to the unmitigated squalor, misery and poverty is the excruciating scale of incessant looting and colossal stealing of the nation’s Commonwealth.
Salis said: “Corruption as at today, had ballooned to a notoriously hydra-headed monster, which can only be engaged with a devastating iron fist, rather than mere kid gloves.
‘’Corruption as we have it particularly at this present time, is not just a softie that you trifle with, you need to fight it dirty and silly.”
“For many years, Ghana wallowed in a terrible economic crisis, not because there were no qualified technocrats to manage the economy but simply because of endemic systemic large-scale corruption persistently prevalent at that time.
‘’It wasn’t until Jerry Rawlings got there and gave Corruption a good fight,that Ghana began to change for the better.”
“Citing the case of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Salis said he wouldn’t have been able to provide free compulsory education in the old Western Region which other regions couldn’t provide if his government was corrupt neither would it have been possible for his party the UPN to implement the free education program in the states controlled by them if corruption had been predominant.
“Moreover Awo as Minister of Finance was able to manage the war-time economy without borrowing a Kobo from external sources because corruption was at most very minimal at that period”
