A former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung, has praised an assistant commissioner of police, Daniel Ameh, for rejecting a 200,000 dollar bribe from a suspect in Kano.
Mr Dalung spoke at an event organized by the Center for Awareness on Justice and Accountability, CAJA, in collaboration with the Penlight Center for New Media Innovation to honor the outstanding police officer in Kano on Wednesday.
DAILY NIGERIAN reports that Mr Ameh rejected the bribe in April 2022, when he was the Divisional Police Officer, Nasarawa Division, Kano.
The former minister was apparently referring to the 2018 exclusive videos published by DAILY NIGERIAN, showing the governor of Kano State governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, stuffing dollars believed to be bribe from contractors into his babbarriga gown.
While a former executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, Yusuf Usman, was showering eulogies on Mr Ameh before presenting the award plaque to him, Mr Dalung interjected and said, “And he did it in a state where dollars are stolen.”
The comments elicited laughter in the hall that was filled to capacity.
Speaking earlier as a discussant, the former minister berated those he described as political bandits for holding the country to ransom.
He described the awardee as a shining light of the Nigerian police force, arguing that the force is not corrupt as widely assumed.
He also admonished young people to imbibe the virtue of integrity, saying that anti-corruption agencies alone could not win the fight against corruption.
“It is not true that Nigerians are corrupt people; it is also not true that Nigerians are fantastically corrupt people.
“Since I arrived in this hall, I have been fighting a losing battle. Out of over 200 million people, a minority, whom I refer to as political bandits, has kidnapped our values, everything that belongs to us, and even the goodness in us.
“We pay them ransom through our daily suffering, and as we continue to suffer, they kill people, abduct women, and rape women in front of their sons and daughters. These people continue to present Nigeria as a nation of comedy,” he said.
“The only weapon that is needed to defeat corruption is not the anti-graft agencies. Young people must imbibe the quality of integrity, which means truthfulness, hard work, selflessness, love, tolerance, etc.
“If you are an extremist, you don’t have integrity; if you are a religious bigot, you don’t have integrity; if you are an ethnic bigot, you don’t have integrity.
“And if you are a pretender, you don’t have integrity. Therefore, the Nigerian police is not corrupt,” he added.
