AS Nigeria celebrates 25 years of uninterrupted democratic governance, it has become imperative to acknowledge the contributions of individuals and groups that have helped in one way or the other in shaping the system. One of such groups is the Social Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP. Though, their source of funding is not be known, they have not failed to drag erring individuals or group of persons before the law courts of the land with a view to correcting the ills of the society each time such needs arose.
In a democratic setting, it is only organisations such as this that can be relied upon to curb the excesses of political actors and ensure that they comply with every aspects of the nation’s constitution.
Even though records of victories recorded by them in the various cases they have with the government are largely unknown, they non the less deserve accolades from Nigerians.
SERAP’s latest grouse with the government of the country is the non compliance with laws that made it mandatory for political office holders to declare their assets at resumption of office as well as at their exit time from same.
However, only very few members of this political group have kept fate with this constitutional provision since 1999. Records show that the president of the country (1999 – 2007), Chief Olusegun Obasanjo collected his asset declaration form from the Code of Conduct bureau but never returned it as required. Most of the politicians are equally guilty of this act.
Meanwhile, SERAP has scored very high in the patriotism evaluation scale of Nigerians. The organisation has become first among the various Civil Society Organisations, CSOs in the country keeping tab on the activities of government with intention to ensure that only proper things are permitted in the nation’s democratic setting. But for this group of Nigerians, it could not have been noticed that the Nigerian supplementary budget for 2023 contained a provision of N15b for the construction of a “befitting” house for Vice President Kashim Shettima and another N2.5b for publicity in Abuja as proposed by the Capital Territory minister, Yesom Wike. They drew the attention of the National Assembly to this fact and urged them not to approve it.
With the attention of Nigerians drawn to Tinubu’s non declaration of asset, after one year in office, it becomes compelling to re-examine the role of the Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB in the fight against corruption. There is no gainsaying the fact that many political office holders in the country do not take the directive to declare their assets in compliance with the laws of the land serious. And yet it is not certain that CCB has ever brought these erring persons to book for contravening the extant laws of the nation.
The reasons for the poor performance of organisations such as the Code of Conduct Bureau, National Orientation Agency, NOA and the Federal Character Commission to perform optimally as partners with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in the fight against corruption may not be far-fetched. These include poor budgetary allocations and lack of staff motivation when compared to the attention paid to EFCC in the national budget.
For example, a visit to most of the state braches of National orientation Agency shows that the staff morale is very low as there are hardly any official vehicles to help take appropriate messages of government from place to place in their domain. Even the promotion of good ethics through radio jingles which is supposed to be one of the tools in the hands of this agency appears to have become a thing of the past.
Without the resetting of the mindset of the people and enforcement of laws requiring them to do the needful in direction of asset declaration before and after occupation of public office, the task of ridding the country of corruption will remain a very difficult one. In fact, for better effectiveness, assets of political office contestants ought to be declared before they are cleared to contest.
In the mean time, SERAP should not end up reporting Tinubu and to CCB. They should equally put pressure on the agency to publicise the declared assets of notable politicians and show proves of those prosecuted for inability to declare assets or wrongly declaring one. Or can CCB not be sued for failure to function properly?
