By Kingsley Chukwuka
Deputy Chairman, House Committee on Anti-corruption, Hon. Dachung Bagos (PDP-Plateau), on Tuesday made a strong case for proper funding of agencies fighting corruption in the country.
Bagos stated this during an interaction with Journalists in Jos.
He promptly said it is an “under funded agency. You fight corruption with this kind of money?
“It is clear that the tools the agency needed for its work consisted mainly of soft wares which are very expressive”, he said.
He appealed to the federal government for upward review of the allocation to enable the agency carry out its mandate without any hindrance.
Recall that in October last year, the Senate also faulted the policy directive which mandated the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to transfer all final forfeited assets of crimes to the office of the Attorney General of the Federation for management.
The Senate had faulted the directive when the EFCC, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), appeared before a Committee.
The anti-graft agencies had cried to the Committee that one of the agencies had only N350 million for the capital budget in 2022.
However, Bagos, who represents Jos South/Jos East Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives, said, if the budgetary allocation of the agencies are not reviewed upwards it will continue to hamper their performance to check corrupt practices.
According to him: “From what I have seen, I can categorically say that the anti-corruption agencies are ever ready to nip the monster in the bud but there is poor support from the government.
“The budgets of these agencies are too poor and they cannot operate effectively when they are under-funded.
“This is why these agencies appear to lack the capacity to do what is expected of them.
“We cannot fight corruption through presumption. We need a proper, effective, workable and practical system in place that will instantly dictate any act of corruption.
”Lack of this approach has made our anti-graft agencies to rely solely on petitions and sometimes tips to go after some of these enemies of the land.
“Government on its part must have the political will and be deliberate in its quest to kick corruption out of the society and not go after mere perceived political enemies”, he said.