FEBRUARY 24, 2012 BY JOHN ALECHENU, ABUJA
The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Mr. Sam Saba, has said new prisons will be required if the bureau is to adhere strictly to the laws establishing it.
He noted that the number of public officers who observed the rules in the breach was significant enough to cost government hundreds of billions of Naira in the cost of investigation, prosecution and jailing of offenders.
Saba said this in an address at the CCB compliance training for chief executives and heads of MDAs in Abuja on Thursday.
He said, “Currently, if we are to go strictly by the breaches and consequences of non-compliance, the Federal Government will have to spend hundreds of billions of naira building new prisons, investigating and prosecuting public officers that breach the code.”
He said the training programme was organised to acquaint public officers with the need to abide by the rules to save time and resources as well as reduce, if not eliminate corruption, in public service.
Saba told the participants, “To reduce this huge cost of both time and resources on the government, the bureau is confident that your cooperation as responsible officers towards this compliance training programme will increase the compliance level within all MDAs to reach our projected 100 per cent in the next 8 to twelve weeks.”
In his address on the occasion, the Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, urged public office holders to rethink the accountability architecture of the nation in order to run a more open administration.
Amaechi, who was represented by his deputy, Mr. Tele Ikuru, noted that corruption had stifled Nigeria’s growth, adding that the training workshop was timely.
Amaechi said, “The coming of this workshop at this time of our national repositioning is very apt given the damage that corruption and lack of public probity and accountability have caused this divinely and richly endowed nation.”
The governor also stressed the importance of inter-agency and, intergovernmental and across-board information sharing mechanism that would render the diversion of public funds difficult.
He expressed confidence that this would in turn checkmate corruption at every level of government.
Earlier, in a key note address, former Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Muhammadu Uwais, traced the history of code of behavior for public officers.
He noted that during the colonial and the early post-independence period in Nigeria, there was no law like the code of conduct for public officers.
He recalled that local governments and native authority staff had their individual service rules, just as federal and regional agencies also had theirs.
Uwais however said, “With the coming into force of the 1979 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the October 1, 1979, the Code of Conduct for Public Officers was entrenched in the Constitution.”
SOURCE: The Punch, 24 February 2012. http://punchontheweb.com/
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