The Federal Government has, on Thursday, recovered 40 brand new SUV cars from a former permanent secretary [names undisclosed].
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed disclosed this in a statement.
Alhaji Mohammed said that the unnamed former permanent secretary appropriated the vehicle to himself after leaving office.
He said: “The strategy has proven so effective and that it has led to, among others, the recovery of 40 brand new SUVs and other vehicles from one former Permanent Secretary who single-handedly appropriated the vehicles to himself when he left office.”
He said the federal government was not just fixated on prosecution alone but was also taking preventive measures to make corruption unattractive.
Mohammed noted that strict enforcement of the Treasury Singles Account had largely reduced the diversion of government funds into various secret accounts.
He also stated that the constant fishing out of ghost workers in the public service, which he said many states were now adopting, are some of the preventive measures against corruption.
He, however, said some other measures had been perfected to strengthen the anti-corruption fight.
He added that the measures included the establishment of the Presidential Committee on Asset Recovery and the Asset Tracing Committee; the setting up of an Asset Register, and the Whistle Blower Policy.
The minister also announced the plan by the government – working through the Code of Conduct Bureau – to commence, starting in 2017, a trial run of electronic asset declaration to facilitate compliance and also to search and retrieve data on the assets of public officers
In addition, he said, the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption was also working with relevant MDAs, especially the National Bureau of Statistics, to improve data collection on corruption indicators generally.
He said that “once perfected, the data will be shared with government periodically, if possible as regularly as government receives data on inflation and unemployment trends, to indicate trends in corruption and influence government measures to correct the situation before it gets out of hand as we have now.”
Giving more explanation on the Presidential Committee on Asset Recovery, he said that the committee meets regularly to take reports from key law enforcement agencies on government’s anti-corruption effort, share information and intelligence, review the challenges being faced in the anti-corruption efforts generally and give directives on the way forward.
The Minister, therefore, said it would be wrong for the government to be accused of fighting corruption without any clear strategy.
Rather, he said it was being guided by a well-articulated strategy in its fight against corruption in the country.
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