“No mercy for looters, we’ll drag them to court in weeks,” Buhari tells Abdusalami’s peace committee

Every government official accused of looting Nigeria’s treasury will soon be prosecuted in the country, President Muhammadu Buhari has vowed.

“Their prosecution will begin in a matter of weeks,” Buhari said at a meeting with members of the national peace committee led by Abdulsalami Abubakar in Abuja on Tuesday.

“Nigeria has to break this vicious cycle before we can make progress,” Presidential media aide Femi Adeshina quoted Buhari.

“My administration was diligently getting facts and figures pertaining to the nation’s stolen funds, before proceeding to the prosecution of identified culprits.

“We are irrevocably committed to doing all within its powers to break the vicious cycle of corruption, unemployment and insecurity in Nigeria.

“We have really degenerated as a country. Our national institutions, including the military, which did wonderfully on foreign missions in the past, have been compromised. But we are doing something about it. The military is now retraining and morale has been resuscitated.

“As petroleum minister under Gen Olusegun Obasanjo  in the 1970s, I could not travel abroad until I had taken a memo to the federal executive council asking for estacode. Now, everybody does what he wants.

“That is why security-wise and economically, we’re in trouble.”

Buhari said he was not only interested in recovering Nigeria’s looted funds. He said he will stop at nothing to ensure the looters face the wrath of law.

Abdusalami’s committee are urging the President to do whatever it must within the rule of law.

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