President Muhammadu Buhari’s war on corruption is set to encounter stumbling blocks as the Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, Nta Ekpo, on Friday January 15th, affirmed that the anti-graft agency had been unable to successfully carry out its statutory responsibility of fighting corruption due to insufficient funds.
Nta stated this when he hosted members of the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes, headed by Senator Chukwuka Utazi in his office.
He further stated that the budget for the ICPC was insufficient in carrying out its responsibility of fighting corruption.
“In 2015, the commission proposed N9.5 billion, but N4.9 billion was appropriated, while N4.2 billion was released.“The difference between what was appropriated and released is N697, 470,164 million. The budget performance for 2015 on recurrent and capital is 100 per cent based on releases.“In the 2016 budget, so far, information from Budget Office (ceiling) for recurrent is N680, 984, 456 as against N764, 182, 724, while it was N300 million in 2015 and N132 million in the 2014 appropriations.”
On assumption into office on May 29th, 2015 legal experts had advised Buhari to immediately sanitize and financially empower some of the law enforcement and anti-graft agencies in order to achieve an all inclusive fight against corruption.
Reacting on behalf of the senate, Utazi said the legislatures would work out modalities on how to strengthen anti-corruption institutions.
He said during the consideration of the 2016 budget at the committee levels, issues raised by the ICPC would be addressed.
“This administration has to fight corruption and we are here as a committee to strengthen this commission.“We are also asking you to look at the ICPC Act and then bring suggestions as amendments that will help us do our job.“We are going to help the President succeed in his fight against corruption. We must also focus on prevention, rather than prosecution.“It bothers us that the only thing we hear about ICPC and other anti-graft agencies is prosecution.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment