Friday Olokor with agency reports. A former Minister of National Guidance, Alhaji
Yusuf Maitama Sule, has said public officers
convicted of looting public funds should be
barred from partaking in partisan politics and
holding public office.
Sule told the News Agency of Nigeria in Kano
on Sunday that the ban should be backed by law
of the National Assembly.
“But this will be possible when there is a law to
back it and we hope the law will be enacted
soon to support the idea,” he said In their reactions to the ex-minister’s
recommendation, however, the National
Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, Yinka
Odumakin, and the President, Campaign for
Democracy, Bako Abdul-Usman, described the
elder statesman’s call as an illusion, saying
such action would be hard to carry out.
He noted that the fear of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission by public officers
was now the beginning of wisdom.
“The EFCC has done extremely well in the
discharge of its responsibilities so far as there
are a lot of recovered funds.
“But the biggest challenge for the EFCC is that
it can investigate but it does not have the power
to spend money and utilise it for other
purposes,” he said.
Sule, who is also a former Nigeria’s Permanent
Representative to the United Nations, also
called for an enabling law for the government to
utilise the recovered funds to improve the living
standard of Nigerians, especially the common
man.
He suggested the revitalisation of education,
agriculture and power sectors in order to give
the nation’s moribund industries a new lease of
life using the recovered funds.
The elder statesman commended President
Muhammadu Buhari for tackling insurgency,
especially in the North-East.
“We have to thank God Almighty for the peace
that has since been restored to the country and
we will continue to pray for its sustenance.
“No meaningful development can be achieved
in any country without peace and even the
‘most die-hard cynics’ know that President
Buhari has done well in terms of restoration of
peace to the country,” he said.
Sule urged Nigerians to continue to support and
show understanding to the government in its
determination to restore sanity to the country.
Odumakin, however, stated that the country
should first be restructured before such a
suggestion could be considered.
He added, “To confirm somebody a looter, a
court has to pronounce him so. We have fought
corruption for 16 months now without a single
conviction, so who are you barring? We have to
put the country on a new structure that does not
aid corruption so we can use the stick against
those who are committed to crooked means.
“As it is now, corruption is the order of the day
and it won’t go away by media propaganda. We
have to deal with the architecture of corruption,
which compels nearly all those in public office
to play by its rule.”
Abdul-Usman, who described Sule’s call as an
illusion, said it would be asking for too much to
ask the current crop of the National Assembly
members, whom he referred to as being more
corrupt than the executive arm of government,
to pass such a law.
He said, “Who will make the law for such
people? Is it the legislators who are more
corrupt than the executive arm in our country? I
think this call should be viewed as a wish-list or
an illusion.
“The constitution has to be amended.
Consequently, if the legislature should uphold
such view, it is like making a law to hang
themselves. The enforcement is within the
judiciary, who in recent times passes two
different judgments on same case.
“The call is timely but it is a mirage in our
democratic society for now with the calibre of
ex-governors in the National Assembly.”
But a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike
Ozekhome, who agreed that convicted looters
should be barred from politics and from holding
public office, however, said before this could be
done, the 1999 Constitution should be amended.
He said, “That will mean amending the 1999
Constitution, which provides that only a person
who has been duly tried and convicted of
criminal offence, relating to a breach of trust or
other criminal offence in the last three years
before the election, shall be barred from
contesting such election.
“I agree that looters of our common patrimony
should be barred from public office but that
must be after a proper trial of the accused
person because our criminal justice system is
accusatorial and not inquisitorial.” http://punchng.com/looters-barred-politics-says-maitama-sule/ 
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