Boss Mustapha, secretary to the
government of the federation, says the fight against corruption has not been
won despite efforts being made by the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration.
Mustapha spoke on Tuesday with
other stakeholders at an event in Abuja, tagged, ‘One-day dialogue session on
strengthening the anti-corruption agenda: ensuring accountability and
transparency’ which was co-organised by PACAC and the Centre for Democracy and
Development (CDD).
The SGF, who was represented by
Amina Shamaki, permanent secretary on special services, said the Buhari
administration has recorded unprecedented level of success 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.
Mustapha said there is a need to
bring about “innovative legislations, policies, and measures to deal decisively
with the lingering acts of corruption”.
“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,” he was quoted as saying.
“While the fight has been very
successful in tackling monumental corruption, fewer 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.
“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.”
The SGF also suggested that
existing financial intelligence unit structure be adopted for sharing
intelligence on corruption.
Itse Sagay, the chairman of the
Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), listed the
consequence of corrupt acts to include massive unemployment, unequipped clinics
and hospitals, wretched schools, colleges and universities without facilities,
bad roads and lack of electric power.
“Deaths on the roads, deaths at
hospitals, deaths at maternity facilities, follow and militants, kidnappers,
armed robbers, murders, suicides are also a direct product of this Nigerian
culture,” he said.
On her part, Idayat Hassan,
director of CDD director, who was represented by Lukman Adefolahan, the
organisation’s senior programme officer, said a lot needs to be done to fight
corruption.
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com