By Umar Bayo Abdulwahab
Ilorin
An Ilorin based legal icon, Mallam Yusuf Olaolu Ali, has expressed reservations on the approach of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to fight corruption.
He said “the top to bottom approach” adopted by the president cannot work and therefore would not yield the much expected desired result.
Ali spoke with journalists in Ilorin at the weekend after being awarded the prestigious award of Fellow of Kwara State Polytechnic, after donating a fully equipped E -Resource Centre building to the institution during its combined convocation of 48,761 graduates which covered eight sessions (2008-2016) .
“I have always said that this ‘top to bottom’ approach fight against corruption cannot work, they should create a mass movement. When you arrest three persons out of thousand, what can you achieve? If we have to start from somewhere like some people are saying, then let’s start properly.
“Now, bribery or whatever you call it, is just one out of many and when you are fighting corruption in public places and you are making noise about it, definitely you can’t achieve any reasonable result. There is a way you fight it and get maximum result, not just making noise.
“If you have to fight corruption successfully, you dig deeper. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem, bribery is not the only indices of corruption, we have lies, nepotism, religious bigotry, criminality etc; by people .Our police officers still openly collect bribe on our roads and for me, that is just a tip of the ice bag” .
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who decried the present economic recession Nigerians are going through, said it was “largely caused by the bad image of a country rid with corruption that was sold to the outside world”
