The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara has queried the current approach adopted by the Ibrahim Magu led Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to fight corruption in the country. The Speaker made his position known on Thursday when officials from the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) visited him in Abuja.
He lamented that despite having huge funds in the country's foreign reserve account, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has failed to declare interests accruing to the account.
He stressed that the EFCC that would have raised alarm over this criminal act was maintaining silence on the matter. He stated that countries like Botswana have such interest as their second highest revenue source.
According to him, “In Nigeria, we have been asking the question, are we earning or are we just running charity with it or just leave people to manage it. From the way we are fighting corruption, it is like emphasis is built on EFCC, but the problem with that approach is that you are dealing with the symptoms of corruption."
“Once you continue to deal with the leaves and the fruits, and the root is still there, you cannot totally eliminate corruption. These are preventive agencies and we ought to invest more in agencies such as the Fiscal Responsibility Commission because we have to make it difficult for corruption itself to take place. Once we do that, we will be applying the remedy at the root of corruption.
“There is no limit to the kind of attention we can pay to agencies like this, because this is the right way to combat corruption itself to ensure that resources are efficiently allocated and that we have fiscal discipline.”
