A professor of law from the Faculty of Law, University of Jos, Joash Amupitan, has appealed to the National Assembly to pass into law, the whistleblowers law to ensure transparency and governance at all levels.
Professor Amupitan who made the appeal while delivering the 81st inaugural lecture series of the university; with the theme “Nigerian Corporate Governance: from concentrated ownership to dispersed ownership which way forward”, said National Assembly needs to hasten action on this as part of their contribution to the anti-corruption crusade.
“The nation’s assembly should as a matter of urgency pass into law the protected disclosure and whistleblowers bill, 2016 to further enhance accountability and transparency in both the public and private sector.”
He lamented that pensioners in Nigeria are been short-changed, pointing out that huge sum in various pension funds were not been utilised effectively for development of the country.
“Pension funds now run into trillion of naira in Nigeria and it remained unutilised and un-invested thereby opening it up for misappropriation. The worse of it is that pensioners are short changed by administrators.”
Professor Amupitan called for the reform of the pension, administration in Nigeria, “it is against above background that we advocate the reform of the pension scheme by building pension administrators into strong institutional investors since they have the powers to invest and manage pension fund and assets under section 55(b) and 85 of the pension reform act.”
The university don said Nigeria is currently in recession due to mismanagement of public resources. “Mr Speaker sir (Yakubu Dogara), Nigeria has no reason to be in recession, but due to mismanagement of national resources by those in the hem of affairs.”
“We may illustrate this scenario with the case of Cadbury Nigeria Plc. There were allegations of overstatement in the company’s financial statements for the period 2003 -30th September 2006 to the tune of 13 billion made against 20 persons including the managing Director/CEO, some directors, the external auditors and the registrars,” said Amupitan.
Plateau state deputy Governor Prof Soni Tyoden, who was a former Vice Chancellor of the university said the topic of the lecture was timely, considering current challenges in the Nigeria economy, and congratulated the University for keeping fate with the traditions of inaugural lectures.
Earlier, Vice Chancellor of the University of Jos, Professor Sebastian Maimako, in a welcome address said the lecture will help address issues bordering on corporate governance.
Professor. Maimako revealed that the 81st public lecture was the first he has chaired as the vice Chancellor of the university of Jos since assumption of office last year June.
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