Oyebola advocates public execution for convicted corrupt officials

The chairman of Board Publications Limited and former editor of Daily Times, Chief Areoye Oyebola, has advocated public execution or life imprisonment for corrupt Nigerian officials.

The veteran journalist, who is also the founder of Movement for Nigeria’s Total Transformation (MNTT), said government should expose the amount stolen with the list and locations of those properties in Nigeria and abroad.

Oyebola made the proposal in a paper he presented at a rally organised by stakeholders in support of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Ibadan, Oyo State capital last week.

He insisted that the issue of plea-bargain should be jettisoned while government announces what it intends to do with recovered loot.

“On our monumental and outrageous corruption, it will be tragic to encourage our sad situation through inaction. This will result in the type of desperate and far-reaching JJ Rawlings intervention has experienced in Ghana. But in our case, too much blood will flow and many heads will roll if this type of drastic intervention takes place here in Nigeria”, he declared.

Oyebola expressed concern that within the last 30 years, Nigeria has risen from 20 per cent to 70 per cent in abject poverty, while the Chinese shrank from 56 per cent to 12 per cent within same period, citing the UNDP report.

He said: “The reason is that Chinese leaders never allowed that country to become fantastically, monumentally, senselessly and outrageously corrupt like a failed state and unfortunate and ever-tottering country called Nigeria.”

Oyebola said a senior Chinese head of a public institution was executed for misappropriating $500,000, while his deputy who convinced the panel that he did not know that his boss was stealing the money was jailed for life.

According to him, the way out is to urgently convene a high level meeting comprising the president, Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justices of the Supreme Court, Justices of the Court of Appeal, leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives with the leadership of the Senior Advocates of Nigeria as well as the executives of the Nigeria Bar Association.