Muhuyi Rimin-Gado, former chairman of the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Commission (PCACC), says confronting corruption in Nigeria is as dangerous as taking on Colombia’s infamous drug cartels.
Speaking in Lagos on Tuesday at the public presentation of the 19th edition of 100 high-profile corruption cases in Nigeria, organised by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre), Rimin-Gado said entrenched corruption networks in the country operate with the same ruthlessness as the Medellín and Cali cartels once led by Pablo Escobar and other notorious drug lords.
He said the cartels built empires from cocaine trafficking, amassing vast illicit wealth that fuelled violence, public terror, and bloody confrontations with authorities in the South American country.
These traits, Rimin-Gado noted, mirror the conduct of corrupt Nigerian politicians desperate to protect stolen public funds.
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He added that the surge in violence and banditry across northern Nigeria is partly linked to the “naked abuse and stealing of public funds” by political elites whose policies create an environment of poverty, despair, and recruitment opportunities for criminal groups.
He said it was while investigating corruption petitions in Kano that he uncovered multiple companies allegedly connected to a former governor of Kano.
Rimin-Gado noted that several public–private partnership initiatives and billions of naira in the state’s internally generated revenue, especially land rent receipts, were fraudulently diverted.
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The former PCACC chairman described corrupt politicians as a “cancer” that can only be removed through a painful but necessary “surgical operation” if Nigeria must reclaim its dignity globally.
He urged Nigerians to use democratic tools to vote out leaders who are part of a “league of corrupt elite” who have sold the people’s birthright.
Rimin-Gado said his efforts to investigate alleged looting in Kano state triggered sustained threats to his life and the safety of his family.
The ex-anti-graft chief narrated how he was arrested last Friday by heavily armed security operatives who allegedly drove him overnight from Kano to Abuja and detained him for 17 hours.
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The arrest, he said, was allegedly linked to the corruption cases he is trying to expose.
