Olusola Fabiyi, Abuja
The Federal Government said on Thursday that it had recovered 40 brand new SUV cars from a former permanent secretary.
It said that the unnamed former permanent secretary appropriated the vehicles to himself after leaving office.
It, therefore, said it would be wrong for it to be accused of fighting corruption without any clear strategy.
Rather, it said it was being guided by a well-articulated strategy in its fight against corruption in the country.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, stated this in a statement.
Mohammed said, “The strategy has proven
so effective and that it has led to, among others, the recovery of 40
brand new SUVs and other vehicles from one former Permanent Secretary
who single-handedly appropriated the vehicles to himself when he left
office.”
He said the Federal Government was not
just fixated on prosecution alone but was also taking preventive
measures to make corruption unattractive.
Mohammed listed the strict enforcement
of the Treasury Single Account and the constant fishing out of ghost
workers in the public service as some of the preventive measures
government had taken against corruption.
He added that other measures included
the establishment of the Presidential Committee on Asset Recovery and
the Asset Tracing Committee; the setting up of an Asset Register, and
the Whistle-Blower Policy.
Reacting to the recovered SUVs story,
the Nigeria Labour Congress has called for a diligent investigation that
could lead to the prosecution of the former permanent secretary
involved in the scam.
The NLC’s General Secretary, Dr. Peter
Ozo-Eson, who spoke on behalf of the workers’ union, also called on the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and other anti graft agencies
to launch a comprehensive investigation into the allegation to determine
if such acts were widespread in the public service or not.
“Well, I don’t have the details but if a
retired permanent secretary walks away with public assets of that
magnitude, then clearly, it is criminal and examples need to be made of
such people by diligent prosecution, and making an example of him so
that people can stop this fraudulent act.
“…But I think it is straight forward
that if indeed they have identified such a person and they have
conclusively determined that he took away such items, he should be
prosecuted.
“Yes, investigation by the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission and other anti graft agencies will be
necessary. For now, the crime is alleged, it is the process of
investigation that would determine if the crime is even more widespread
within the public sector or not. And I think that it should be pursued
so that the country can have the full benefit of how widespread the
thing is.”
However, the minister also announced the
plan by the government to embark on a trial run of electronic asset
declaration to facilitate compliance and also to search and retrieve
data on the assets of public officers.
The e-asset declaration policy, which would start in 2017, would work through the Code of Conduct Bureau.
In addition, he said, the Presidential
Advisory Committee Against Corruption was also working with relevant
MDAs, especially the National Bureau of Statistics, to improve data
collection on corruption indicators.
He said, ‘’Once perfected, the data will
be shared with the government periodically, if possible as regularly as
government receives data on inflation and unemployment trends, to
indicate trends in corruption and influence government measures to
correct the situation before it gets out of hand as we have now.”
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