Debo Popoola
Corruption is a disease, a highly contagious viral infection. Viral diseases are so contagious that they easily infect those that try to evict them from their host body if these people are not extremely careful. We have heard of cases of Doctors and Nurses contacting virus while trying to diagnose people who had shown symptoms of viral infection. During the Ebola virus rage in West Africa, a lot of medical practitioners, while trying to fight against the Ebola ‘insurgency’, lost their lives in the process after contacting the viral infection from their patients.
Virologists have advised that when dealing with virus, one should be extremely careful as any carelessness can result to one contacting it. There are strict measures to be taken on this and strong antivirus injections are given to those handling such vcases.
Corruption has similar characteristics of any other viral disease. The contagiousness of corruption is one of them. We have seen people who, before assuming a public post, had the intention of serving the masses and their country with utmost sincerity. But the moment they got hold of power and they began to mingle with other politicians who already had the infection, they lost their initial intention of serving the masses and they too got infected.
We can even say most Nigerian politicians who are holding or have held one government post or the other, had one time felt dissatisfied with the situation of the country. The quest to effect a meaningful change drove them to become a politician, especially during the military administration. But, as John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton says: “Absolute power corrupt absolutely” these people got intoxicated with power and their desire to serve dissipated into thin air and the love for wealth gets them in its grip.
On Larmode, him being the head of a body empowered by the constitution to go after corrupt individuals, means he was assumed to have injected into his system a strong anti-virus that will always repel any advances of the virus called corruption. But the ironic twist of life played against him as he that had gone after corrupt politicians is being fingered of the same allegations he has levied on others. Such is it with virus. If you are not very careful, you get infected while trying to clean it.
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday sacked the Chairman of the anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde. In a statement issued by his special adviser media, Femi Adesina, Buhari has approved the appointment of Mr. Ibrahim Mustafa Magu as the acting chairman of the EFCC.
Lamorde took over from Farida Waziri as the chairman of the EFCC in 2011 after the latter was sacked by the former President Goodluck Jonathan.
According to the statement, Mr. Magu, who is an Assistant Commissioner of Police is to take over from Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde who is proceeding on terminal leave ahead of the formal expiration of his tenure in February next year.
George Uboh, a security expert had dragged Lamorde before the senate in August for allegedly diverting N2trillion proceeds from forfeited assets seized from corrupt Nigerians, which were kept in custody of the anti-graft agency.
There have been calls from different angles for Larmode’s probe. Any moment from now, the former anticorruption team leader may be led to the diagnostic center, and if tested positive to the virus called corruption, he surely will be quarantined.
