The Primate of the Church of Nigeria, the Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, has backed President Mohammadu Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign, saying the church must stand with the president in calling for a clean Nigeria. At a conference held on 18 August 2015 for the church’s chancellors, registrars and legal officers in Abuja, Archbishop Okoh reported the president’s war on graft was “on course” and as now “gathering facts and statistics” to bring malefactors to trial. The Punch newspaper quoted the archbishop as saying: “The church has always been in the vanguard of anti-corruption crusade; preaching and teaching that people should live right. When you live right, there will be no need for anybody to set up any panel or set up a court against anybody. If you take what belongs to you and I take what belongs to me, then there is no cheating. But a situation where somebody will take what belongs to everybody and appropriate it and then others are deprived, that is a bad situation.’’ Archbishop Okoh urged Nigerians to be patient with the president, noting the investigations would take time. “We should pray for him to be painstaking enough and also pray for those around him that they too will be dispassionate, will have the spirit of discernment and follow due process so that everything will be done decently and in order,” Archbishop Okoh said.
