‘No going back on anti-corruption war,’ President tells Abdulsalam committee

President Muhammadu Buhari has said that there will be no mercy for persons who looted Nigeria’s resources while in public office.

Buhari also said that the looters in question would soon be prosecuted for their offences.

The president made the comments during a meeting with members of the National Peace Committee headed by former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar on Tuesday, August 11, 2015, a statement by presidential media aide, Femi Adesina said.

According to the statement, Buhari told the committee that his government was "irrevocably" committed to doing all within its powers to break the vicious cycle of corruption, unemployment and insecurity in Nigeria.

Buhari said:

“Nigeria has to break this vicious cycle before we can make progress. 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," President Buhari told his guests, adding that those who have stolen the national wealth "will be in court in a matter of weeks and Nigerians will know those who have short-changed them.”

The committee urged Buhari to abide by the rule of law in his anti-corruption fight but denied that it had met with him in order to stop the planned probe of the Goodluck Jonathan administration.