Why we can’t publish Buhari’s, Osinbajo’s assets – CCB

FROM GODWIN TSA, ABUJA

The Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) yes­terday explained it could not make public the assets declara­tion of President Muham­madu Buhari, Vice Presi­dent, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) and other public of­fice holders because the enabling law under which it operates, does not permit the agency to do so.

However, the CCB said it would soon forward a bill to the Eighth National Assembly seeking to allow Nigerians to have access to assets declara­tion of public officers.

The bureau disclosed this yesterday at the anti-corrup­tion seminar organized by the Nigerian Bar Association [NBA] in Abuja.

Secretary of the CCB, Mr. Kolade Omoyola, who spoke as a representative of the Chairman, Mr. Sam Saba, explained that the Constitu­tion only allows the bureau to keep records of the assets declaration of public office holders.

“The bureau is working in partnership with the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) to present a bill to the Eighth Assembly that any Nigerian can have access to assets declaration of public officers.

“The Constitution only allows us to keep records of assets declared by public offi­cers secretly from the public,” Omoyola explained.

President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo had sub­mitted their assets declara­tion forms separately to the bureau. However, the con­tents of the forms were not disclosed.

The development immedi­ately sparked public outcry over the failure of Buhari and Osinbajo to publicly declare their assets as promised by them during their campaigns.

Specifically, some civil society groups and activ­ists, championed by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), the Civil Societ­ies Legislative and Advocacy Centre, Ebun-Olu Adegboru­wa and Smart Ajaja, have demanded that the assets be made public in the best inter­est of transparency and ac­countability.

Meanwhile, the Chief Jus­tice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Mahmud Mohammed, in his speech at the event, urged the Bar to purge itself of its dishonest members for the Bench to be corruption-free.

Justice Mohammed said since the Bench was a prod­uct of the Bar, it would not change if its origin remained the same.

The CJN spoke through an­other Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice John Fabiyi.

The CJN said it was time for the legal profession to ex­orcise the pernicious ghost of corruption from its midst so that the Bench could be free of unethical practices.

He said, “it is important to highlight that the bench is a product of the Bar and unless we work in synergy to ensure that only fit and proper per­sons remain in our midst, it will be impossible to expect a different Bench when its ori­gin remains the same.

“I hereby call on the lead­ership of the Bar to expunge from its ranks, such persons whose conduct may be unfit, improper, dishonest or other­wise unethical.

“The time has surely come for us all to take concrete, meaningful and lasting ac­tion to exorcise the pernicious ghost of corruption from the most noble of professions.”

He said although there were corrupt judges in the ju­diciary, “corruption within the judiciary is only imbibed by a minute minority”.

The CJN, however, noted that while the judiciary con­tinued to discipline erring judges, the beneficiaries of such corrupt acts were never punished.

He said between 2009 and 2014, there were 64 judges among the serving1,020 judges of the superior courts of records as of 2014 “were disciplined as appropriate” with some of them sacked by the National Judicial Council.

President of the NBA, Mr. Augustine Alegeh (SAN), lamented that despite the es­tablishment of the anti-cor­ruption agencies, the problem of corruption remained unre­solved.

He said, “despite the estab­lishment of anti-corruption agencies such as the Indepen­dent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Com­mission and the Economic and Financial Crimes Com­mission, the nation appears to be helpless in its fight against corruption.

“Successive governments had been quite vocal in their criticism of corruption and had wasted little or no time to draw up road maps and poli­cies which were claimed to be the final solution to ending the endemic scourge called Corruption.

“However, very little suc­cesses were recorded in this regard as these policies were either never implemented or when implemented, were ob­served more in breach than in compliance,” he said.

Source:Sunnews