Publish assets of public servants to curb corruption – ICPC tasks CCB

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has called on the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) to publish the assets declared by public and civil servants.

The ICPC declared that this will assist to curtail corruption in the public sector.

According to a statement on the Commission’s website, its Chairman, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, noted that the secrecy that envelops asset declarations by public and civil servants was abetting corruption.

Owasanoye stated this during a meeting with the Chairman and board members of CCB.

He said, “Publicising asset declaration will assist the whistle-blowing policy and our work. We have not been able to take full advantage of asset declaration because of the opacity around it. If somebody lied about his or her assets, he or she can be found out by just the opening of the page where it has been published.

“I want to encourage the Bureau to push for that because the public will help us to do our work. They will tell us who owns what assets and whether it is proportionate to their earnings.”

In the statement, ICPC boss stated that the obscurity that surrounds asset declarations had added to insecurity problem and underdevelopment confronting the country.

Similarly, Owasanoye urged the Bureau to move to review and revise the Assets Declaration Form to include information that could assist to trace assets such as BVN and new forms of investments such as cryptocurrency.

He also appealed to the Bureau to commence digital declaration of assets as against the old manual declaration method, adding that it would assist in the easy tracing and analysis of assets and also enable CCB to provide government with information on the lifestyles of both public and civil servants.

Professor Owasanoye was quoted as saying, “If you digitise asset declaration, it will help you to reach everybody under your cover. It is easily analytical and helps you to know what asset the public servant owes. It will enable you to inform the government about the status of public servants, whether they are doing badly or not.”

The ICPC boss guaranteed that the Commission was willing to help the Bureau with capacity-building programmes for its staff.

Owasanoye showed confidence that CCB would be active in assets recovery as an enforcement measure, noting that public servants who lived beyond their legitimate income should have the illegally acquired assets taken away from them.

Previously, the Chairman of CCB, Professor Mohammed Isah, stated that the fight against corruption cannot be won by one agency alone.

Isah called for cooperation between the anti-corruption agencies, stating that it should include not fiddling into the investigation of any request that was previously being addressed by any of the anti-corruption agencies.

He said, “In the areas of overlapping function, who starts investigation of a petition first should be allowed to conclude. The others should stop investigating the same matter to avoid wastage of resources. There is no need to over engage ourselves by doing the same thing.”

CCB Chairman added that the Bureau was prepared to share information on asset declaration with ICPC to help its investigations.