The Chairman Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission, Barrister Ekpo Nta has affirmed that the immunity clause in the Nigeria’s constitution never bar public officers from being investigated, contrary to widely held views.
Nta who made the clarification when featuring in a Television programme monitored in Abuja, said that the issue of immunity which many Nigerians spares public officers from being investigated has never been a save haven for some corrupt serving public officers.
According to him, the “immunity does not cover or bring to an end criminal investigation, there is no act in existence today that says you cannot investigate anybody, what it says is that you cannot prosecute some sitting officials at certain levels”.
Ekpo Nta emphasised that the major function of anti-corruption agencies and the police “is to get any accused into the law court with whatever evidence the commission has against them and for the law court to determine the merit of any such matter, so that we don’t become persecutors.”
On effectual implementation and assessment of the national budget, which is largely done by the legislative arm of government, the ICPC boss reiterated the committed efforts by the anti-graft agency to spur various ministries and MDAs to be accountable for whatever quota accrued to them.
He said for anyone to get a true picture, “It is from there that you monitor what is going on through their oversight functions, but we do have reports from the auditor general of the federation”.
He said the ICPC had been having interface with the National Assembly committee to see those audited reports, adding, “We have been doing some of tho investigations on those aspects, and we can see evidence that we are making some good gains.”
Ekpo Nta said before now, at the end of the financial year, ICPC used to go round all the MDAs to look at the left over funds which probably had not been sent back to government coffers.
“We did a lot of recoveries, thank God we now have the electronic platform which shows clearly that this fund is not there or it is here,” he said.
Nta who also used the opportunity to assess the on-going Bank verification Number (BVN) exercise affirmed that, it was just the right step in the right direction, as the exercise was long overdue.
“I had said clearly that the on-going exercise of biometric capture of all bank customers would aid anti-corruption agencies in tracing fraudsters who use the banking sector to dupe innocent persons.
“with the on-going exercise, when you tie that up with National Identity Card, the driver’s licence, the voters’ registration, there is a strong likelihood that I should be able to trace who these fraudsters are”.
Nta pledged that the Commission would take the fight against corruption to a new level, noting that at “every course of our country’s development, we have not felt happy about the act of corruption that we have to face.”
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