Politics
State govts hindering corruption cases -ICPC
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, has accused state government officials of interfering in court cases being prosecuted by the commission.
This was stated by the Chairman of the commission, Mr. Ekpo Nta, in Abuja at the weekend, when a team of the anti-corruption commission of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, paid him a visit.
According to him, interference by political leaders in states has been one of the challenges the commission is facing in the anti-graft war.
Continuing, Nta said: “The Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000 restricted the commission to charging its cases in state high courts. This is a setback to the anti-corruption fight because it often leads to political interference by sympathizers of the accused persons in their home states.”
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Nta also said inadequate funding is another hindrance to effective anti-corruption fight, adding that preventive measures is a more effective way of checking corruption.
He said if the institutions were working the way they should, “the huge sums we hear that have been stolen from government coffers would not have happened.”
He further explained that instead of expending energy, time and other resources on investigative activities and the prosecution of corrupt individuals, it was better to design systems that would prevent corruption.
According to him, most of the cases tagged as corruption were actually system defects, adding that the ICPC had been involved in systems study and review in order to correct anomalies in government institutions.
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