Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect said his administration will put incentives and policies in place that will make corruption unattractive for judges and other Nigerian workers.
The Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), winner of the February 2023 presidential poll having “polled” 8,794,726 votes, to defeat Peoples Democratic Party’s Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi who came second and third respectively.
However, Tinubu’s victory is being challenged at the Election Petition Tribunal by Atiku and Obi’s camps. The tribunal will hear the petition on May 8.
The duo insisted that the election was massively rigged by the ruling party and prayed to the court to nullify the INEC declaration.
In another allegation, Bola Tinubu reportedly forfeited the sum of $460,000 to the government of the United States of America, in 1993 following a drug trafficking saga.
In a statement signed by his media aide, Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, the president-elect during the inauguration of a Magistrate Courts Complex in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, said he would make corruption unattractive to judges and other public officers.
He said with the right incentives that guarantee a conducive working atmosphere and policies that make it easy for workers to acquire credit facilities for essential needs the temptation for corruption would reduce.
“You don’t expect your judges to live in squalor, to operate in squalor and dispense justice in squalor. This is part of the changes that are necessary. We must fight corruption but we must definitely look at the other side of the coin. If you don’t want your judges to be corrupt you got to pay attention to their welfare. You don’t want them to operate in hazardous conditions,” he said.
He added lack of consumer credit which could make it easy for workers to acquire property such as houses and cars make them susceptible to corruption.
“If you have consumer credit that will reduce the propensity for corruption. We don’t want our judges to play foul, to compromise justice. I promise we are going to review all of these in a policy think tank,” he added.
Tinubu also reiterated the unity of Nigeria promising to be fair to all.
“The unity of this country is not negotiable. That is what Wike and I are promoting jointly. I promise I will be fair to all,” he said.
Earlier, Governor Nyesom Wike said the inaugurated complex contains 24 courtrooms, offices and other facilities meant to decongest the state high court complex and expand access to justice, stressing that his administration considers the welfare of judges and the condition of courts essential for speedy justice dispensation.
