TheCable

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says Nigeria’s poor rating on the Transparency International (TI) corruption perception index has vindicated it from allegations of plundering the nation’s wealth.

In the 2020 index released on Thursday, the country scored 25 out of 100 points — its lowest since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed power in 2015.

The opposition party, in a statement by Kola Ologbondiyan, its national publicity secretary, described the Buhari administration as “a citadel of corruption”.

The party alleged that the Buhari administration only deluded Nigerians with its anti-corruption fight — one of its three major campaign promises — “while the vaults were laid open for APC leaders and officials”.

“Indeed, the record of unbroken decline from 136th in 2016 to 144th in 2018, 146th in 2019 and now 149th in 2020, under President Buhari, the African Union (AU) Anti-Corruption Champion’, settles the now notorious fact that the Buhari administration and the APC are titleholders in corruption,” Ologbondiyan said.

“Nigerians can now see that what the APC and the Buhari Presidency did, upon assumption of office, was to simulate a holier than thou attitude, deploy the instrument of propaganda to deliberately castigate the PDP with false corruption allegations just to divert public attention and create a safe atmosphere for APC leaders to loot our nation to her knees.

“The fact remains that no matter how lies and falsehood try to prevail, the truth will always come to light at the end of the day.”

The PDP said the rating gives credence to its “alert on the allegation of the stealing of over N15 trillion by APC leaders and political cronies in the Presidency”.

“Now that the Buhari-led APC administration has been further exposed, our party charges Nigerians to join in the demand for the APC, as a party, to commence the processes of refunding the N15 trillion stolen by its leaders before exiting our political firmament in 2023,” it said.

The APC regularly mocked the PDP-led governments over corruption perception reports before coming power in 2015.