$2bn Arms Deal: NLC Tasks FG on Thorough Investigation, Suggests Capital Punishment
As security and anti-graft agencies expand their scope in the ongoing probe of persons in the last government in the $2 billion arms deal, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has called on the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to ensure a thorough investigation in the trial and stringent punitive measures against those found guilty.
The NLC said considering the staggering sums involved in several of the corruption cases, the situation could create anarchy in the country if nothing is done.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja, NLC President, Mr. Ayuba Wabba, said: “The ongoing messy revelations on the $2.1billion arms deal have vindicated our unqualified support for the fight against corruption.
“The revelations by the former National Security Adviser (NSA), his erstwhile Director of Finance, Shuaibu Salisu, which we believe are just the tip of the iceberg, are mind-bogging and justify as well as reinforce our call for capital punishment.
“We believe with the prescription of more stringent punishment for corruption cases, few will dare to go to this extent. We need no telling that massive corruption in the system, is responsible for our lack of development and our present economic woes.”
Wabba stated that the “rising cases of alienation, civil disobedience, crime and insurgency are directly traceable to wanton cases of corruption in high places which did not only create avoidable diseases, ignorance and poverty, but have totally incapacitated our people.
“We as a people and as a nation cannot continue like this, except we want to continue to be the laughing stock of other nations and want to create a state of anarchy. Because, certainly, our teeming youths and the army of the unemployed who look unto their country for means of livelihood, will not fold their hands while a few individuals corner the national resources.”
He said: “We must be resolute in our support for good governance and fight against corruption. We must entrench the culture of accountability, ensuring that public officers are accountable in and out of office.
“We urge President Buhari not to relent in his war against corruption. Even if it is his only major achievement in four years, it will suffice. At least it would have succeeded in loot recovery as well as set a national moral barometer capable of attracting international confidence and respectability.”
On the devastating sleaze in the power sector, the NLC president said: “In furtherance of this campaign, we call on the government to among other things, probe the power sector reform programme which has delivered darkness instead of light in spite of billions of dollars expended on it.”
Asked if the call for power sector probe should include the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime where about $16 billion was said to have been diverted, Wabba said: “All the regimes should be probed, no government should be spared. All the administrations that were alleged to have spent billions of dollars while we still have darkness should be investigated.
“Even in the last government, the entire process of power privitisation should be revisited. We hold that the process was traded in secrecy and that has not delivered on the mandate of providing light.”
The NLC also warned that it “will definitely not allow any attempt to politicise the anti-corruption efforts. While we urge the anti-corruption agencies to follow due process, we demand that those who cry foul play and call for equity must come with clean hands.”
The NLC further urged the President Buhari’s government in implementing the Prof. Itse Sagay’s committee report, the terms of reference “should be expanded to accommodate receiving confidential information on corruption and forwarding same to anti-corruption agencies for prosecution and recovery.”
The body argued that the “seizures totalling about $5 billion dollars from various suspects are a lot of resources needed for national development. Money pocketed by these big-time criminals cannot be made available to pay salaries nor can it be available for payment of minimum wages. Financial crimes also worsen the image crisis of Nigeria and undermine national recovery.”
Also, Wabba called the anti-corruption agencies to beam their searchlight on former and serving governors, who he accused of truncating Nigeria’s development pursuit due to the naked display of public funds looting across the states.
“The searchlight should also go to state governors who have pocketed states’ resources. The searchlight should also go to the private sector.”
He recommended “life sentences for public funds looters, as they are also killers.”
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