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.
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