THE ruling All Progressives Party (APC), was conspicuously absent at a debate between political parties centered on corruption and accountability ahead of this year’s general election.
The debate tagged ‘Big Debate on Corruption and Accountability’ organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development, had in attendance the Presidential Candidate of Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP), the Presidential Candidate of African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, the National Secretary of Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Paul Isamade, Representative of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Kazeem Afebua, the National Publicity Secretary of Young Progressive Party (YPP), Comrade Egbeola Martins.
Meanwhile, during the debate, the other party representatives were at their various podium, while the podium of the All Progressives Congress was empty, as no representative was there.
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Speaking, the Representative of the PDP, Afebua said why corruption continues thriving in Nigeria was because of the power monopoly bestowed on the chairmen of anti-corruption agencies.
He said the party if voted in would decentralise the powers of the chairmen of these anti-corruption agencies by constituting a board of distinguished Nigerians into the agencies, thereby decentralising the control of the agencies.
“The global definition of corruption is monopoly plus discretion minus accountability. It’s the monopoly power of an individual that makes him abuse his discretionary power.
“What we will do as a government is to ensure that we deny the institutions and agencies fighting corruption of that monopoly power, rather than have a chairman taken from the Nigerian police as Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) or Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offense Commission (ICPC) chairmen, you will have a board made up of distinguished Nigerian who have proven record of integrity and accountability, because the history and perception of the Nigerian police, is not one where you can find Angels.
“Nigeria is a country of sins without sinners, look at the individuals making commentaries that people are corrupt, they too are a mesh in endemic corruption. As a government, once you are able to deal with the issue of abuse of monopoly of power, you will now to ensure that there are special courts, created, established to thrive corruption cases, given full independence to be able to take action and conclusively deal with incidences of prosecution and adjudication of corruption cases. We will also promote the culture of printing whistleblowers and protecting witnesses,” Afebua said.
On the part of the YPP, the representative, Comrade Martins said the party would use a systematic approach like Information Communication Technology (ICT) to tackle corruption in the country if elected.
“We intend to apply a systematic approach. It’s centered around the use of ICT to tackle the problem of corruption. The issue of budget padding and contract inflation. After an analysis we discovered that over 90 percent of the current corruption problem that we are having us as a result of this two sources that we identified, and we will tackle this using external forensic auditing, before it goes to National Assembly we will ensure that it’s being watched and audited, to ensure that there’s no duplication.
“On the issue of contract inflation, we are going to automate the system. The attitude of fighting corruption in this part of the world is like that of bow and arrow, automate the system, make sure that procurement is done electronically. This will reduce drastically the issue of corruption in this country. Official corruption is the main reason why we are where we are today and the only way to put an end to it is to be able to reduce the human effects and this we will able achieve within four years because we have stipulated our procedures on how things will be done”.
The ANRP Presidential Candidate, Fasua said “technology always delivers, one of the things that cause corruption in this country is the addiction and psychological problems. In our party constitution, what we are going to do is live by example, we are going to declare out assets open, leadership by example is great, technology is very important, psychological tests of people who are running government is very important.
Sowore, the Presidential Candidate of AAC, also hinted on using technology deployment to vent the spread of corruption in public service and other sections of the country.
“It’s very important that in dealing with corruption in Nigeria, using technology to aid prevention, there’s what they call block chain technology with encryption that you can use. The biggest problem is how we do our transaction in the public sphere, and the lack of transparency in the way we conduct our business.
“The moment you remove that, all the thieves will be left dry because before they get anything done, we have seen it and tracked it. The second thing we are going to do is ensure that our assets are made publicly available, it should be something that you can download”, Sowore submitted.
The ACPN National Secretary in his submission said “our party will fight corruption from the roots, corruption exists even inside the churches, the churches encourage corruption in this country, traditional institutions also aid corruption by giving out awards to corrupt people.
“Fighting corruption in this country has to take a different dimension, apart from strengthening the institutions that are empowered to fight corruption, the national orientation agency in Nigeria is not doing anything about it, we need every agency to go enlighten the people continuously even down to secondary schools”.
It was learnt that the debate would also continue on other sectors of the economy subsequently with other political parties participating based on nominations from the p
and then