Participants at a one day town hall meeting held in Makurdi, the Benue State capital have urged anti graft agencies in Nigeria to narrow the gap between arrests, prosecution and convictions of public officers suspected to have engaged in embezzlement of public funds as a way of stemming the tide of corruption in the country in line with the anti corruption war of the Buhari led administration.
Organized by CLEEN Foundation, the meeting which had as its theme, “Towards Fostering Citizens’ Support for the War against Corruption in Nigeria had in attendance officials of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the ICPC as well as the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
The participants noted that the call became necessary owing to the fact that citizens were daily being inundated with news of arrests of public officers with very minimal or no information about their prosecution and convictions in the end.
Participants also anticipated the support of anti-graft agencies and the federal government on behalf of Benue state government to effectively prosecute the war against corruption in the state especially regarding the arrest and prosecution of corruption cases associated with the previous administrations.
Earlier, Project Manager of CLEEN Foundation, Oluwole Ojewole who noted that Nigeria ranks 136 among 168 countries according to the 2015 Corruption Perception Index released by the Transparency International explained that the stark rating calls for urgent need to deploy all necessary measures to stem the tide of corruption in Nigeria.
“While cases of corruption also abound in the private sector in terms of monetary and administrative related corruption, the public sector is a key area that has been identified as a conduit for looting public funds by public servants.”
“Recent cases of accused public officials (serving and retired) give credence to the urgent and critical need to make public institutions and structures more accountable and transparent in their dealings.”