President Bola Tinubu has been challenged to prove his commitment to fighting corruption by starting public office cleansing from the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (OSSAP-SDGs) headed by Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire.
Orelope-Adefulire was a former commissioner when Tinubu was the Governor of Lagos State. She was also a former Deputy Governor of Lagos state under ex-governor Babatunde Fashola.
Since her appointment by former president Muhammadu Buhari in March 2016, the OSSAP-SDGs have been enmeshed in corruption. The OSSAP-SDGs has become an agency of the government where multi-billion naira stealing of public funds through various means like non-execution of awarded projects to power that be in which most of them occupying strategic and top positions in Tinubu’s government, looting and mismanagement of public funds by top management of OSSAP-SDGs through various departments such as M&E, Finance & Accounts, Special Project Units (SPU) and others.
Barrister Ernest Njoku, a legal practitioner and renowned activist who is the President of Movement Against Corruption (MAC), a non-profit and non-governmental organisation, described various media reports on the high degree of corruption that has been allegedly going on at OSSAP-SDGs as disturbing, adding that there is urgent need to put an end to this because SDGs was a creation of UNDP with principal focus on 27 development goals across the globe, but the reverse has been the case in Nigeria, as it has been an office where Nigerian commonwealth is being shared and looted.
Barrister Njoku said: “Our organisation has decided to change the narration by taking the OSSAP-SDGs to court to compel the office to provide all documents relating to its activities particularly projects awarded, sites of the projects, statements of accounts of the office and other public documents. We will rely on the FOI and the court of the law to secure those documents for Nigerians to see the level of what is going on.
“I want to assure that anybody who is found wanting will not only face the court of law but explain to Nigerians how he or she mismanaged our public wealth.
“We are not going to underrate these people. Our plan is to begin a kind of international sensitization and campaign for the world to see the rot at OSSAP-SDGs. We will embark on peaceful protests across major cities of the world. The protests will be held in countries such as the USA, UK, Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland and others, Barrister Njoku vowed.
“We want to implore Nigerian media to join hands with us and take President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on his words to fight corruption. I won’t let the cat out of the bag in this interview regarding what we are planning to do and the documented evidence we have to pursue our case against OSSAP-SDGs and the management of the office. We strongly believe that to whom much is given, much is expected from him or her,” Njoku said.
The activist insisted that the action of Movement Against Corruption will be a litmus test for President Tinubu if he truly has the political will to fight corruption, especially when it involves some of his close people, that is the reason we want to pursue this to a logical end. The rot at OSSAP-SDGs must stop and the guilty must be brought to book,” he said.
