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Executive Chairman of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Mrs
Farida Waziri has said that the Freedom
of Information (FOI) bill presently
before the National Assembly will boost
the fight against corruption and other
forms of economic crimes in Nigeria when
eventually passed into law.
The anti-graft agency boss disclosed
this in a paper she presented at the
first annual forum of serving and
retired permanent secretaries which
ended at the weekend in Abuja.
‘There needs to be in place a
conscientious system for the gathering
and dissemination of information and
this is linked to societal values. The
press must castigate the villains and
praise the heroes. It is through such
activities that people will appreciate
that it pays to have integrity. To this
extent, a freedom of information
legislation coupled with investigative
reporting could be helpful. These will
also engender a culture of freedom of
speech which is a constitutional
guarantee but in practice hardly
utilised. The freedom of information
bill could tremendously help the
process’, Waziri argued while speaking
on ‘Maintaining Personal and
Institutional Integrity in the Public
Service’ at a session chaired by Dr
Christopher Kolade, a former Nigerian
High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
She stated that for any anti-corruption
initiative to succeed in any society,
certain structures and specific pillars
of integrity such as political will,
effective law enforcement, judiciary,
legislation, media, civil society must
be present and functional.
According to her, ‘where any of these
are not functional, then there will be a
problem and there is no incentive for
anyone to have integrity. If the law
enforcement agencies are working at full
throttle but the judiciary is not
effective, the criminal will simply
ambush the process at the doors of the
judiciary and get away. Conversely,
there must be the political will to
squarely address the problems and the
legislature must intervene with remedial
laws whenever it is necessary. Of
course, the media and effective civil
society groups must serve as
dispassionate watchdogs of the system.’
She argued that it is only when the
needed structures are in place and are
functional that acts of corruption will
be effectively discouraged and integrity
rewarded.
‘This has been the plank from which the
EFCC has consistently insisted that the
missing piece in the jig-saw puzzle in
the fight against corruption is the
establishment of a special court to try
all cases of corruption and other forms
of economic crimes. Time without number,
the Commission has gone through the
whole process of investigating crimes
only for the process to be stultified in
the courts of law for unnecessarily
periods of time’, the EFCC Chairman
added.
In a press release
by Femi Babafemi the Commission's
spokesman,Waziri
urged all public office holders to
follow the exemplary leadership style of
President Umar Musa Yar’Adua by working
to enthrone personal and institutional
integrity in any office they find
themselves.
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