The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has said the National Assembly should redeem its fading moral and ethical image.
This was as HURIWA accused the National Assembly’s committees and investigative panels of soliciting bribes.
HURIWA made the claim against the backdrop of what it termed a grand scale of corruption and pervasive unethical procurement practices in most federal ministries and agencies.
A statement by the group’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, stated that the last five years have seen monumental proportions of corrupt practices and open theft of public funds by top placed officials under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Onwubiko, however, stressed that this trend may become worrisome and persistent in 2021 because the hierarchies of the anti-corruption agencies are not cut out nor are they professionally committed to stamp out corruption amongst top flight civil and public servants.
He wondered why the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) has been operationally incapacitated and polluted to fight the corruption.
HURIWA alleged that the “weakening of EFCC and ICPC by the All Progressives Congress dominated national government is an act of treachery and sabotage of a phenomenal height which must be dismantled so these institutions are allowed unfettered power to crush corrupt federal government officials destroying Nigeria now.”
The group said the deliberate incapacitation of these anti-corruption institutions happened because there are pervasive allegations that both agencies are compromised with illegal employment slots by Permanent Secretaries and Directors General of government agencies that their heads are in conflict with the anti-graft laws.
According to HURIWA: “For over two decades of the coming of constitutional democracy, the respective committees and investigative panels constituted by the different sessions of the National Assembly made even criminally worst and complicated by the current Ninth Session of the National Assembly and so these panels that ought to passionately and independently embark on the investigations of proven but disturbing accusations of widespread and elaborate corruption schemes by heavyweights in the Federal governments are also involved in a network of bribe seeking and settlements just as their findings which now sounds like broken records are never taken far nor have they ever been implemented no matter how far reaching and profound by the corrupt executive arm of government.
“HURIWA will suggest that the National Assembly must redeem her fading moral and ethical image which has become decadent from accumulated years of bribes seeking and bribes taken to undermine the outcomes of the respective investigations. The executive arm of government is also in the habit of never accepting to enforce the recommendations of these panels because both the executive arm of government, the Legislative arm of government and corrupt contractors are in a trinity of thieves and so the entire proceedings usually are tailored never to meet any threshold of transparency and accountability.”
