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Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha and the Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN) on Tuesday lamented that despite concerted efforts by the President Muhammadu Buhari’s led administration to eradicate corruption, the scourge still ravages the country.
The duo among other stakeholders spoke at an event in Abuja where they highlighted steps that needed to be taken to strengthen the government’s anti-corruption agenda.
Also at the event: “One-day Dialogue Session on Strengthening the Anti-Corruption Agenda: Ensuring Accountability and Transparency,” goodwill messages were delivered on the subject matter by the Chairman, Senate Committee on Anti-corruption and Financial Crimes, Senator Sulieman Kwari; the Director of Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) and organizers of the event, Idayat Hassan and Director, Africa Office, MacArthur Foundation, Kole Shettima, the funding partner.
The SGF who spoke through the Permanent Secretary, Special Services, Amina Shamaki, disclosed that the Buhari administration had since 2015, recorded “unprecedented level of successes” in the fight against corruption by securing “the most number of convictions, including very high-profile personalities” and making “world-record recoveries in terms of money and assets.”
He, however, lamented that despite the successes recorded, the anti-graft war had not been won.
He said: “Nonetheless, we should not rest on our oars with the illusion that the war has been won despite the level of the successes I have enumerated.
“While the fight has been very successful in tackling monumental corruption, less grandeur cases are perceived and even reported.
“While the government has displayed uncommon courage to relieve its appointees especially, in its agencies, of their positions and responsibilities, there still exist some level of infractions on Public Procurement Act, and other laws. These tend to diminish the efforts of government in this direction.”
While proffering solution to end the scourge, the SGF expressed the need to bring about “innovative legislations, policies and measures to deal decisively with the lingering acts of corruption.”
In addition, he posited that the roles of audit departments/units and auditors in aiding and abetting corruption in ministries, departments and agencies should be addressed.
To this end, he called for the prosecution of auditors who sanction corrupt payments alongside the main culprits in corruption cases.
He added: “I should like to see the Office of the Auditor-General for the Federation come up with innovative policies and measures to empower auditors to halt any payment that is clearly in breach of Public Procurement Act, Financial Regulations, Public Service Rules in particular, and other laws, in general.
“For such auditors that compromise, or are complicit, such policies and measures should isolate them for disciplinary action which should not preclude prosecution.”
On his part, Prof. Sagay noted that the consequence of corrupt acts, included “massive unemployment, unequipped clinics, and hospitals, wretched schools, colleges, and universities without facilities, bad roads, lack of electric power and so on.
“Deaths on the roads, deaths in hospitals, deaths in maternity facilities, militants, kidnappers, armed robbers, murders, suicides are also a direct product of this Nigerian culture,” he added.
As a short-term solution to the corruption problems, Sagay suggested that “the existing Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit structure be adopted as the centre of Nigeria’s intelligence databank for sharing information and intelligence on corruption.”
Adding his voice to the issue, the CDD Director, Hassan, who spoke through the Senior Programme Officer of the organisation, Lukman Adefolahan, also said “a lot more still needs to be done to strengthen the fight against corruption, promote accountability and transparency”, despite “the great strides” that had been made in the fight against graft.
“These different dimensions of corruption have characterised Nigeria’s landscape and by implication made it be consistently rated among the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International in its Corruption Perception Index.”
She accordingly called for “pragmatic measures to curb corruption” to safeguard Nigeria’s future given the implication of the problem on security, political, social, and economic prospects of the country.”
But Senator Kwari said the Senate through its committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes “is also reviewing all the anti-corruption and financial legislations with a view to bringing them in line with current day realities and making them more effective.”
