The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, has stated that President Goodluck Jonathan is encouraging corruption in Nigeria by his handling of corruption cases.
“The President’s body language’ seems to be encouraging corrupt practices in the country,” the speaker said.
Mr. Tambuwal said the executive arm, headed by Mr. Jonathan, has failed to act on corruption cases revealed by the National Assembly.
He spoke while responding to questions on Monday after he presented a paper titled the ‘role of the legislature in the fight against corruption in Nigeria’ at a one day roundtable to mark the international anti-corruption day organised by the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, in Abuja.
“Take the subsidy probe, the pension, the SEC probe and recently the bullet proof car cases. After the House of Representatives did a diligent job by probing and exposing the cases, you now see something else when it comes to prosecution.
“In some cases, you have the government setting up new committees to duplicate the job already done by the parliament. Take the bullet proof cars case, the NSA, with all the security challenges confronting the country, should not be burdened with a job that can best be handled by the anti-corruption agencies,” he said.
He also said the government has no business setting up any administrative committee in a corruption case that is clear to all Nigerians, in apparent reference to the committee set up by Mr. Jonathan to probe the N255 million car scandal involving the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah. The three-man presidential committee had since submitted its report to Mr. Jonathan, with the president taking no action.
“What the President should have done was to explicitly direct the EFCC to probe the matter. With such directives coming from the President, I am sure we still have good people in EFCC who can do a good job,” Mr. Tambuwal said.
“By the action of setting up different committees for straightforward cases, the president’s body language doesn’t tend to support the fight against corruption.”
While lamenting what he described as the selective nature of prosecution of cases by the anti-corruption agencies, Mr. Tambuwal pledged the support of the national Assembly in the fight against corruption.