Jonathan’s conduct encouraging corruption, Tambuwal says

Tambuwal spoke on the ‘role of the legislature in the fight against corruption in Nigeria’ at a one day roundtable to mark the international anti corruption day organised by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja.He said, “Take the subsidy probe, the pension, the SEC probes and recently the bulletproof car cases. After the House […]

Tambuwal spoke on the ‘role of the legislature in the fight against corruption in Nigeria’ at a one day roundtable to mark the international anti corruption day organised by the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja.
He said, “Take the subsidy probe, the pension, the SEC probes and recently the bulletproof car cases. After the House of Representatives did a diligent job by probing and exposing the cases, you now see something else when it comes to prosecution.
“In some cases, you have the government setting up new committees to duplicate the job already done by the parliament. Take the bullet proof cars case, the NSA, with all the security challenges confronting the country, should not be burdened with a job that can best be handled by the anti corruption agencies.
“The government has no business setting up any administrative committee in a case that is clear to all Nigerians. What the President should have done was to explicitly direct the EFCC to probe the matter. With such directives coming from the President, I am certain we still have good people in EFCC who can do a good job.
“By the action of setting up different committees for straightforward cases, the president’s body language doesn’t tend to support the fight against corruption,” he said.
The Speaker said that government agencies and individuals had been doing business in violation of anti-corruption laws.
He said: “A list of manifestation of corruption especially in the public sector of Nigeria is legion ranging from direct diversion of public funds to private pockets, contract over-pricing, bribery, impunity, nepotism, general financial recklessness, fraudulent borrowing and debt management, public assets striping, electoral fraud, shielding of corrupt public officers among others.”
He said the National Assembly had paved the way for the fight against corruption by enacting the EFCC and the ICPC Acts with enormous powers of investigation and prosecution.
He added that enactment of  the Fiscal Responsibility Act was also aimed at engendering transparency and accountability in the public space.
“Sadly however these Legislations are observed more in the breach by the majority including government and government agencies.”
He said that a survey of the social media showed that 98% of Nigerians who commented on the nation’s corruption index not only agreed with the country’s corruption ranking but in fact felt Transparency International was too generous to Nigeria.
He said the House of Representatives was currently working on some proposals for the reform of ant graft laws with a view to reinforcing the independence of the agencies administering the laws.
Earlier, the chairman of the NBA Anti-Corruption Commission Yusuf Ali, SAN had called for the insertion of anti-corruption clauses in government contracts which would lead to the forfeiture of the contract of any contractor found to have induced officials of government before obtaining the contract.