APC chieftain wants special courts for treasury looters.
A chieftain of All progressives Congress (APC) in Sokoto state, Alhaji Abdullahi Bafarawa, on Monday advised President Muhammadu Buhari to set up special courts to handle cases of treasury looting.
He also urged the president to appoint God-fearing Judges to try the cases.
Bafarawa told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Sokoto that prosecuting those who stole public funds would serve as lesson for others with similar motives.
He advised that only fearless and courageous judges should be given the responsibility to try persons that would be indicted for looting the nation’s funds.
”Those stolen funds should be recovered for the common good of the citizens of the country,” he said.
He advised judges handling corruption cases to ensure quick dispensation of the matters, cautioning that ‘’long litigation is affecting the smooth dispensation of justice.”
Bafarawa commended Buhari for the bold steps being taken to recover the nation’s money from corrupt public officers.
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1 Comments
Bafarawa’s assertion “that prosecuting those who stole public funds would serve as lesson for others with similar motives” is very naive, because such action is not a deterrent to looting. Similar actions in the past have not change the situation in Nigeria. Instead it was even glorified by IBB that returned seized properties by the General Muritala Muhammed to the looters. If punishment was a deterrent to crime, there won’t be crime in Nigeria or any where in the world. While Buhari’s effort must be commended, it should not be a smokescreen to neglect articulating policies that would advance the development of Nigeria or used as a news strategy to divert addressing actual problems facing Nigerians. A true solution to any crime, is prevention. Therefore, to prevent perennial looting of Nigerian treasury, the Buhari administration need to restructure the public service and parastatals with the state and local governments doing similar thing. Such restructure could involve having in place an investigating office as head of every ministry and parastatal responsible for budget monitoring and implementation, investigating reports of looting. The heads of such investigating offices should not serve more than 2 years, and they should equally be under public and police radar for corruption and if they are found to be corrupt, they should be jail for a minimum of 35 years.
Also, the present primary election of the various parties need to be restructured in line with true presidential system that requires citizens participation in every primary elections of the political parties. The benefits of such participation, is the prevention of politics of god-fatherism and emergent of corrupt leaders who have nothing to offer.
We will review and take appropriate action.