House of representatives
Partners
for Electoral Reform, a Civil Society Organisation (CSO), on Thursday described
the Bill on amnesty for treasury looters currently before the House of
Representatives as self-serving and anti-people. House of Representatives
Chairman of the organisation, Mr Ezenwa Nwagwu, said this in Abuja that the
bill did not mean well for Nigeria.
The bill,
sponsored by a member of the House of Representatives, seeks to give looters
immunity to any form of probe, inquiry or prosecution after fulfilling some
conditions. Part of the conditions is to allow persons, who had acquired such
money or assets illegally to voluntarily declare it and forfeit part through
tax and percentage surcharge. Such persons would also not be compelled by any
authority to disclose the source of the funds.
Nwagwu
said that one of the illusions that Nigerians continued to have was the fact
that the National Assembly which ordinarily should be the home of reforms would
bail Nigeria out of its current challenges. “What we see is the continued toying
with sunshine laws that can improve the anti-corruption environment and fights.
“Civil Society Organisations are currently mobilising to shut down that bill
because it is self-serving.
“It is self-serving in the sense that truly,
the biggest challenge to corruption in Nigeria is public sector corruption and
the politicians are implicated in that. “So, they will always continue to want
to make laws that help protect them from that challenge. “My take on the bill
is simply that it is anti-people; it does not mean well for Nigeria and it does
not portray the National Assembly in good light.’’
He said
that essentially, Nigerians needed to understand that the anti-corruption
struggle was not the president’s struggle alone but a struggle for all.
According to him, it is good to have a president who by force of personal
example pushes the issue of corruption but it should be a people’s fight.
Nwagwu said that the masses should own the anti-graft fight and ensure that the
whistleblower protection bill at the National Assembly did not go the way of
other bills.
He urged
Nigerians not to allow the bill to be stalled because it was “everybody’s
bill’’ so everybody could be a whistleblower and fight corruption. “We must
ensure that that bill comes to light in its true content, not watered down and
ineffective,’’ he said. Nwagwu advised the people to continue to give support
to the anti-corruption agencies, especially the EFCC and ICPC, to make sure
that corrupt people did not have a field day in Nigeria.
Vanguard
News
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