Former NBA Vice President advocates selective approach to corruption fight

Ikeazor Akaraiwe, a former Vice President of the Nigerian Bar Association, on Sunday said that selective approach in the fight against corruption would yield effective results.
Akaraiwe made the assertion while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria in Port Harcourt on the recent report of the Transparency International, ranking Nigeria low in corruption fight.
TI, the world’s anti-corruption watchdog, in its 2017 Corruption Perception Index released on February 21, ranked Nigeria 148th out  of 180 countries.
The CPI scored Nigeria 28 per cent.
According to Akaraiwe, there is the need to be selective for effective battle against corruption.
He said: Select a sector, face the sector, clean up the sector, and the message will be sent to other sectors.
“A multi-sectoral approach will be like jack of all trades and master of none.’’
Akaraiwe, a former NBA Chairman in Enugu, said that the corruption fight could start from the petroleum sector, the police or the judiciary.
He said: “One major area to face is the judiciary; cases stay too long; I am a lawyer.”
He said that former Governor Chimaraoke Nnamani of Enugu State’s corruption case began in 2007 and lasted for almost 11 years.
Akaraiwe noted that Nnamani was recently discharged and acquitted of corruption charges.
He said: “There is no motivation against corruption when people are not convicted in time or discharged in time.
“The solution is: you have to quadruple the number of judges and magistrates; you now have 15 judges in a state, you need to have 60 to 100 of them so that cases can start and finish in two years.
“That is the major reason the anti-corruption fight is not being won.’’
Akaraiwe described the TI report as startling.
He said that another reason for the country’s low score in anti-corruption fight was that some leaders might not have believed in the fight.
The former NBA official, however, said that President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, believed much in the corruption fight.
According to him, the APC, the platform on which Buhari came into power, is a recent contraction made up of ex-members of PDP characterised by corruption.
He said: “When you have a party and perhaps as much as 50 per cent of the key members were members of the very corrupt, former governing party, you have a problem in your hands.’’
He advised the Federal Government to embark on in-house cleaning “so that it can deal decisively with some vital missing links’’.
He said that the allegations of corruption against current government officials should be investigated and necessary actions taken.
He said: “If three or four indicted members of the government have been sacked, corruption would have been dealt with.”
Akaraiwe who is contesting for the presidency of the NBA, rated the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission high in corruption fight but remarked: “ICPC is missing in action”.
He added: “Code of Conduct Bureau appears to be missing in action too.’’