Amendment ICPC act, upon false petition to the commission, Senate president-WDNews247. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related O...
Amendment ICPC act, upon false petition to the commission, Senate president-WDNews247.
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Act was amended by the National Assembly's upper chamber on Tuesday to impose a two-year sentence without the possibility of a fine on anyone who submits a false petition or provides false information to commission representatives. The ICPC Establishment Act contains provisions for the protection of anyone who provides the ICPC with information about an offense that has been committed or that is likely to be committed by someone else.
In fact, one of the most recent amendments proposed by the departing Senate should not be swept up in the current debate over removing fuel subsidy because of how cruel and vengeful corruption is. That is, if Nigeria is serious about transparency and accountability in government.
Suleiman Abdu Kwari, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes, presented a report on the ICPC Act (Amendment) Bill, 2023 (SB.1115). Section (25) (1) was changed to read: "Any person who makes or causes any other person to make to an officer of the commission...any statement which to the person's knowledge is false or intended to mislead shall be guilty of a."
The majority who spoke during the report's discussion proposed a sentence of five to ten years in prison without the possibility of a fine for making fraudulent claims through petitions or other channels. The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, responded by arguing that in order to prevent the victimization of innocent people, the punishment should not include the option of a fine. Without the option of paying a fee, the speaker noted, "those who want to commit the offense will have to think twice." According to the Senate President, "we have done a very good job by doing the scrutiny we did."
The Senate would prefer that the nation spend its time chasing after rats when it could be putting out fires, based on its 150th place ranking out of 180 nations evaluated by Transparency International in its 2022 Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Why didn't the Senators tighten the rope on corrupt individuals by increasing the punishment for graft instead of altering the ICPC Act to discourage whistleblowers from reporting corruption cases? We think that because sleaze is so prevalent and has such negative effects on Nigeria, there should have been stronger laws discouraging and punishing it.
Due to the country's lax legal system and constrained prosecuting agencies, government officials who were charged for corruption sometimes got off easy or received only a warning. If the Senate had any good intentions, it should have prioritized improving anti-corruption laws and the ICPC as an agency rather than punishing those who submit fake petitions or provide misleading information to the Commission. Even while providing false testimony or fabricating evidence to convict an innocent person is wrong, there are already laws in place, such as the Whistleblower Act, to address such mistreatment.
Non-commensurate punishment for corruption in the public sector is where there are more flaws. More specifically, the sentence for misappropriating or embezzling public monies should be lengthened in prison.
Many Nigerians have demanded the execution of public officials found to have stolen from the public coffers. Some even support China's brutal methods for eliminating corrupt individuals. The Senate does not need to disregard these concerns in order to protect persons who might be able to reveal cases of corruption in public service. We question what message the parliamentarians hope to convey to the world community with this abhorrent amendment. Here is a nation whose citizens have been disparaged as being utterly corrupt by the British prime minister who is currently in office.
The same Senate reported on Wednesday that hundreds of federal government ministries, departments, and agencies misappropriated a staggering N3.8 trillion they earned through the Service Wide Votes (SWV) within four years, demonstrating once again how deeply ingrained corruption is in the system.
"Hundreds of Billions of Naira were claimed to have been used for the purposes of paying salary shortfalls although such agencies had already collected appropriation for personnel emolument and were on the IPPIS platform," according to a Senate Public Accounts Committee investigation into the disbursement of N5trillion from the SWV to about 200 government parastatals between 2017 and 2021. Huge sums of money have occasionally been given to organizations for which they didn't apply. These monies must have ended up in individual pockets. However, there are numerous other overt and covert ways that fraud is committed in government institutions, ravaging Nigeria's precarious finances.
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