UPDATE: ICPC recovers N77.04 billion assets, receives 1, 934 petitions in 2019

THE Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), on Thursday, announced that it had recovered a sum of  N77.04 billion assets from operations, interim and final forfeiture in 2019, while about 1, 934 petitions were also received within the year under review.

Director, Public Enlightenment and Spokesperson for the commission, Mrs Rasheedat Okoduwa, who announced this during the Presentation of 2019 Performance of the ICPC to newsmen at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, however, said only 580 petitions were concluded investigations.

She explained that some of the petitions did not belong to the commission, hence, the need to pass it on to the relevant agencies. She further said some of them were even repetitions as four to five persons wrote the same petition, making the figure keep rising.

While giving the break down of the assets recovered, Mrs Okoduwa said about N1.16 billion (cash) was already at TSA, while N32.038 billion was estimate of assets recovered on lands, building and vehicles; N41.98 billion was restrained on review of Ministry, Department and Agency (MDA) personnel cost expenditure; as well as N0.767 billion recovered from projects tracking and N1.097 billion completed projects on return of contractors to site.

According to her, “The standard in ICPC is that we claim only those for sure we actually believe we can claim. If you ask us now that where are those assets? We can show you, we have the register of those assets. Those that are not cash. The fixed assets, immovable assets, it is actually what we can prompt to, it is not just figure.”

ICPC spokesperson said it is obvious that the commission has become better and made progress and its focus now is to build on that so as to take the staff to a greater height and greater level.

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“We started having a state of capacity building for the different functional areas to start the year so that our staff are empowered to be able to get that next level that we are desirous of. Enforcement people have their own treat, immediately after the board/management treat, system study, corruption monitoring and evaluation department, they have a joint one-week training that involved Auditor-General Office because we are carrying forward such collaboration to make our officers much more robust.

“The  kind of reform this board has brought is actually wonderful which worth celebrating.” She stated.