Point One

When Transparency International (TI) recently unveiled its 2017 corruption perception index, Nigeria’s ranking effectively left rotten eggs on the face of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. The global index that was issued on 21 st February placed Nigeria 148 th out of 180 countries, with a dismal score of 27 marks in a percentage rating field. And this latest ranking showed the country losing rather than gaining ground in graft perception – sliding 12 spots from its 2016 ranking at 136 th position with 28 percentage score. For an administration that anchored its sheer reputation on its anti-graft labours, this profile can’t by any stretch be good news. Besides, the narrative, coming from highly rated TI, just couldn’t be ignored. And so, the government’s initial pushback was to deprecate the typically authoritative index as misdirected and out of track with practical strides being logged against the long-standing culture of corruption in this country. “Politi...

President Muhammadu Buhari was last week reported to have rebuffed a bill proposing to remake the Nigerian Peace Corps from a voluntary civil outfit into a government paramilitary agency. Both chambers of the National Assembly (NASS) had forwarded the bill for his assent in 2017. The President’s veto was contained in a 25 th January 2018 letter read Tuesday on the floor of the House of Representatives by Speaker Yakubu Dogara. In that communication, he cited as reasons for withholding his assent security concerns over enabling the corps to perform regular functions of existing security and law enforcement agencies, and as well the financial implications of the agency’s operations for government. Considering the NASS’s enthusiasm for the proposed makeover of the peace corps, however, the last may not have been heard of the presidential veto. But I hasten to say Buhari did great service and deserves applause for rejecting the Nigerian Peace Corps (Establishment) Bill, 20...