NBA confab: Speakers seek open govt, reforms in key sectors

At the just concluded Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) ‘State of the Nation Conference’ keynote speakers called for more transparency and radical reforms in the country’s key institutions. The speakers said greater disclosures on financial allocations and details of expenditure in the executive, the legislature and judiciary must become part of governance in Nigeria and contribute […]

At the just concluded Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) ‘State of the Nation Conference’ keynote speakers called for more transparency and radical reforms in the country’s key institutions.
The speakers said greater disclosures on financial allocations and details of expenditure in the executive, the legislature and judiciary must become part of governance in Nigeria and contribute to anti-corruption efforts.
The Secretary, Presidential Committee on Anti-Corruption, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, who spoke on the topic ‘Fighting Corruption: What has Worked and What has not Worked’, said “until the proverbial big fishes are convicted, we won’t get the much needed deterrence.”
“Information about the budget, government expenditures, contracting processes and public procurement are sine qua non in succeeding in anti-corruption efforts,” he said.
The committee chairman of NBA’s Administration of Justice, Olawale Fapohunda, spoke on ‘Rule of Law, Security and the Justice Sector.’
He harped on the need to decongest the Nigerian prisons, which have about 75 percent awaiting trial inmates, adding that that could be achieved through the Prisons Amendment Bill.
Speaking on the ‘Economic Indicators and the Health of the Economy’, the lead director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Eze Onyekpere, described as ‘insanity’ for the country adoption of the same strategy on the issues of the economy while expecting different results.
He noted that the country must adopt transparency across board, and that to arrest the declining GDP, contraction in non-oil sector, unemployment and increase of the naira’s exchange rate “fiscal policy and monetary policy have to have a convergence.”
Onyekpere condemned the use of military force to address renewed militancy in the Niger Delta, which has affected the country’s gas supply to electricity and the implementation of the 2016 budget.
Speaking on the role of the Nigerian Army, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Y. Buratai, represented by Major General G.J. Hamakin, said the army has been overstretched with internal security operations, which has resulted in some rights violations.
He enumerated the current internal security operations which involved the army to include Lafiya Dole in the North East, Sharan Daji on herdsmen in the North Central and Pulo Shield against vandalism in the Niger Delta.
He said the army has called up its Rules of Engagement in handling the various operations, including the killing of protesting members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), who he  accused of attacking security operatives.
The representative of the Controller General of Prisons and officer in-charge of Planning, Research and Statistics, Ifediorah Orakwe, called for reform of the prisons to become truly correctional institution through the amendment of the constitution and the passage of the Prisons Amendment Bill before the National Assembly.
The chairman of the House Committee on Anti-Corruption, Babajide Akinloye, said the committee raised the funding for the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) to assist their anti-corruption efforts.
He pledged the readiness of the committee to partner the NBA in the anti-corruption efforts.
The president of the NBA, Austin Alegeh (SAN), said the consensus of lawyers and participants at this year’s ‘State of the Nation Conference’ was that the first 365 days of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has witnessed a lot of positives especially, in the anti-corruption war but that negatives were also recorded such as in the area of human rights and the economy.