Nuhu Ribadu, pioneer chairman of
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), says the commission has
done “fairly well” in its fight against corruption.
He, however, added that for the
war to be successful, law enforcement agencies like the Independent Corrupt
Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the police must
“wake up from their slumber”.
Ribadu was speaking at an
anti-corruption townhall meeting tagged ‘A spanner in the wheel of corruption’,
organised by the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation in Abuja, on Monday.
He decried the high rate of
corruption in the country, pointing out that Nigeria has the number of
corruption cases in the world which is “probably bigger” than cases in all
African countries put together.
“The EFCC alone has over 3800
ongoing corruption cases in the courts, not to talk of other cases,” he said,
adding: “but they have their hands full.
“They (EFCC) has done fairly
well. You need to see what these people go through to get one case to court. It
is hell. Because some people will do everything possible to make sure you don’t
drag them to court. They do not even sleep.
“Let the ICPC wake up from this
their slumber and start doing something too. Same with government ministries.
There are lots of government agencies that are not doing anything to support
the fight against corruption.
“The Nigeria police force should
also wake up and do what the EFCC is doing. Same with the law enforcement
agencies and the judiciary; why are we not getting the convictions in the
corruption cases? They have a role to play as well.”
The former EFCC chairman,
however, said the situation of corruption in the country is “not always
negative” as the country has been able to record some strides in the anti-graft
war.
“Nigeria is the only country that
has successfully recovered stolen money taken abroad,” he said, adding: “Other
countries in Africa and other places have tried but they never succeeded.
Also speaking, Waziri Adio,
executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative (NEITI), said for the problem of corruption to be addressed, there
is the need for Nigeria to first tackle “institutional corruption.”
“Wherever monopoly exists, and
where there is institutional discretion and without measures of accountability,
the institutions will definitely be abused,” he said.
“We need to look at issues of
sanctions, systems and society. We focus too much on sanctions but as important
as they are, they won’t upturn the table.
“We need to put a formidable
system in place. If you have a society where corruption is normalised, no
matter the system and sanction, people will abuse it.”
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