28th February, 2011
Prof. Pat Okedinachi Utomi, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Mega Party, SDMP, has predicted the creation of an international criminal court where people who have impoverished their nations through corruption and embezzlement will be called to account in the future.
He made this prediction at a ceremony where he was decorated as the Grand Patron of the National Anti-Corruption Volunteer Corps, NAVC, a non government organisation that is championing the anti-corruption crusade and the nation’s image.
In the same ceremony, NAVC launched the body called Volunteers Against Rigging and Multiple Voting, VARM.
Utomi recalled that long before the creation of the International Criminal Court, ICC, in Hague, the Netherlands, he had remarked to a reporter in the United States that a time would come when leaders that perpetrate gross injustice and genocide against their own people would be arraigned before an international court of justice for prosecution.
“I remember that I was laughed to derision as they wonder to the practicality of such. But now, what do we have? We all know that Charles Taylor and some other people like him are presently standing before that court. I want to tell you that a time is coming when many of our leaders would be arraigned before an international court for conducting economic genocide against the Nigerian people,†he said.
He further argued that because of the kind of larceny on gargantuan scale committed by our leaders, “industries ground to a halt and we have mass unemployment.â€
He decried a situation where able-bodied youths that should be the greatest assets of the nation are instead, being turned into liabilities.