By Ben Ogbemudia
Senate Committee Chairman on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions Senator Pat Ayo Akinyelure on Friday said the Code of conduct bureau and tribunal is currently facing serious financial challenges hence it can not perform its statutory duties as enshrined in the Nigeria Constitution.
He said the Code of conduct bureau and tribunal, are agencies created by the constitution to fight corruption from the grassroots level adding that,’ they have the constitutional power to fight corruption but they are handicapped in funding.
‘No infrastructure to deliver on their mandate. They have offices in all the 36 states of the federation including FCT. No single overhead to operate those offices. Officials of the agencies don’t even have an enabling environment to work.
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‘So until the government of the present administration decides to fund these agencies very well, we are not talking about fighting corruption yet. We are just seeing corruption and dancing around it.
‘The system we have up there today if you say you want to pick a file of a Senator or outgoing minister they cannot locate it. Rats have eaten up the files in the Asokoro office. But in order to use information technology to handle all this, they need a new edifice in Abuja. With 2 or 2.5 billion, they can have a new office in Abuja fully computerized to fight corruption in this country.
‘This is what we are after and I believe the present administration if we address the issues strictly, will be able to provide an enabling environment for these three agencies, code of conduct bureau, tribunal and public complaints commission. There is no way, code of conduct tribunal will be able to try offenders who have defrauded Nigeria without sending their names to the code of conduct tribunal.
‘They don’t have the means to do the job. The overhead just being paid to them are salaries of workers that have been trained to do the job. They don’t have the infrastructure to deliver. You want to ask a level 8 officer with less than a hundred thousand to go and use his own money to go to Portharcourt and bring an offender when there is no money for the agency.
‘No vehicle, nothing. All the offices are dark. No light. So these are the areas. I think the executive should look into it so that it will be able to adequately fund the code of conduct bureau, tribunal, and public complaints commission. That is where corruption is. And I think it is one of the cardinal agendas of President Muhammadu Buhari. The right agencies need to be funded and that is our take on it.’
