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Anti-Corruption Agencies Must Be Independent For Effective War Against Poverty – Obiorah
Senator, Ikechukwu Obiorah has urged anti-corruption agencies to be independent of political influences in order to be effective in their operations.
Obiorah made the call in a statement on Wednesday, in Abuja.
Senator Obiorah said he was not speaking as an anti-corruption crusader because “we are all sinners.”
He said he had leveraged the knowledge of there being no saints to lay out a detailed plan that would assist the Federal Government in getting value for public funds.
This, he stated, would lead to development and achieve meaningful poverty reduction among the populace.
Referring to his book, ‘How to lift Nigeria out of poverty’, the ex-lawmaker said Chapter 2 highlighted major areas in the public sector requiring amendments to achieve desired anti-corruption results.
First, Obiorah advised that anti-corruption agencies must be totally independent by the removal of any political influence on their operations, including appointment and dismissal of heads of such bodies.
“The President should lose the power to make any appointment or removal or suspension of persons from office in Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offenses Commission (ICPC), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the proposed Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP)”, he said.
He added that the membership of the agencies should be made ex-officio, that is membership by virtue of being nominated through an election by any of prescribed organisations.
These include the NBA, ICAN, ASUU, ASUP, NLC, and NUJ. In addition to these, the UN and Transparency International would nominate six members for each of the above anti-corruption bodies.
He added, “the commission or Board would have power to appoint and remove the DG and a part time chairman by two thirds majority vote.”
Obiorah said that the second step should be amending the constitution to transform the Director Public Prosecutions into the separate Directorate of Public Prosecutions.
The amendment, he said would involve vesting the new Directorate with all the powers relating to prosecutions hitherto held by the Attorney General.
He said membership of the Directorate would be lawyers nominated ex officio by NBA, law Professors nominated by ASUU and international lawyers nominated by the UN and Transparency International.
The third step, according to him, is providing massive information flow on all public sector expenditures, including details such as the cost of the President’s breakfast or travel allowance.
Sen. Obiorah said government spending should be made easily accessible to public without the process of formal applications as in the case of the Freedom of Information Act.
“The EFCC Act should be further amended to make it mandatory at the pain of penal sanction.
“That all government expenditures including salaries, allowances, overhead, recurrent, capital, debt servicing, among others, by all tiers, arms organs, parastatals, ministries, departments and agencies, be published on the website of the respective entity,” he explained.
Fourth, he called for strengthening of the Federal Government’s Whistle-blower Policy, which he said was barely being operated at two per cent of its capacity.
While noting that the programme is a “very essential weapon in the fight against corruption”, he added that the policy “cannot develop and grow in capacity without a comprehensive legislation.”
Obiorah added that the legislation must offer a detailed “framework for identified and anonymous information volunteering, concrete protection of identified informers and collections of rewards.”
He said it would as well contain “civil and penal sanctions against those who victimise or retaliate against whistleblowers.”
In addition, he said to make Whistleblowers’ calls anonymous, the “legislation should create an elaborate mechanism for anonymous reporting, by mandating the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) to untraceable SIM cards.
He said it will ensure “mass production and wide distribution of untraceable Whistleblower SIM cards labelled ICPC and EFCC respectively which would only make calls to the phone banks of ICPC and EFCC.”
The How To Lift Nigeria Out Of Poverty author, said the fifth step in effective anti-corruption fight was to provide for accelerated hearing of corruption cases.
He noted that in spite of the “Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA)’s mandate that criminal proceedings should be on a day to day basis, with a few adjournments allowed when impracticable and that applications for stay of proceedings should no longer be entertained, the pace in criminal proceedings has seen only a marginal improvement.”
“It has become imperative to hire more judges, train and designate some over a number of years for corruption cases,” the author stressed.
The judges, he said, had given a practice direction for compliance with the intendment of ACJA for speedy trials.
On incompetent prosecutors and abandoned cases by collusion, he said “the proposed anti-corruption agencies reform, particularly the proposed DPP, would mitigate that and crank up the wheels of justice.”
The sixth step in boosting the anti-corruption war, Sen Obiorah said, was statutorily extending time for prosecutors to pursue abandoned appeals.
This will address “soft landing” for corruption suspects as such cases can be then be revisited.
According to him, all that will be required is “just an affidavit deposited to the fact that the failure to appeal was in bad faith.”
On standardised procurement processes, the seventh proposed measure, he said was to effectively check corruption in Nigeria and ensure that rigged public procurement processes in Nigeria.
According to him, this will be through the elimination of ‘certificate of no objection’ and ‘lowest evaluated responsive bid’.
To achieve this, he proposed that the bid process procedure should be in two stages; first, pre-qualification, involving the submission of technical bids and bidders’ qualifying documents.
“Second, evaluation and announcement of pre-qualified bidders, who will move on to the next stage of submission and opening of financial bids at a pre-announced date, time and venue.”
He suggested that “the Public Procurement Act should be amended to simplify the process and remove the loopholes that invariably result in insider dealing and rigging of bids.
“It will also drastically reduce the bloated size of the National Council on Public Procurement and Bureau of Public Procurement,” he added.
Lastly, Senator Obiorah proposed that non-remittance of operating Surplus by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) should be criminalised as a way of stemming the anti-corruption fight.
He said, “The Fiscal Responsibility Act should be amended to provide that non-remittance of the prescribed operating surplus is a crime against the Federal Republic by those charged with the Responsibility.
“The Chief Accounting Officers and the Directors of Finance of the MDAs should be specifically charged with the function and responsibility of remitting operating Surplus of the respective MDAs.”
Sen. Obiorah concluded by stating that the faithful and diligent implementation of these anti-corruption measures should bring about transparency and stem misapplication of resources.
He further said it would increase average value-for-money on public expenditure from 35 per cent to 90 per cent and recreate peoples’ confidence in their government and its institutions.
The ex-lawmaker said this would save Nigeria about N6.5 trillion directly and indirectly yearly, create millions of jobs, unshackle the strictures on the economic engine imposed by corruption and grow the GDP up to 20 per cent. (NAN)
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