Corruption: Set Up Judicial Panel Of Inquiry On NDDC, National Assembly Committees – HURIWA Urges Buhari
BY GRACE ANYANWU, ABUJA – Civil Rights Advocacy group – Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has said that there is the high need for the Federal Government to urgently set up a Judicial Commission of Inquiry to unravel the stench of corruption oozing out of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the National Assembly.
HURIWA said that until the ‘investigators’ at the National Assembly and the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC are thoroughly probed to ascertain the veracity and validity of the accusations of huge scale corruptions levelled by both bodies against each other, it will be time wasting to allow either of the bodies that are already tainted and heavily discredited to proceed with any investigation. These were contained in a statement by HURIWA which was signed by its the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, in which the Human Rights organization stressed that it is ethically unjust for someone to be a judge and a prosecutor in his own case adding that the legal maxim that states that “he who goes to equity, must go with hands” applies here.
It therefore called for the immediate disbandment of both the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC and the Committees overseeing the NDDC in both chambers of the National Assembly to enable any form of forensic audits of the interventionist Commission in the heavily neglected crude oil producing States of the Niger Delta Region and the accusations of bribery and financial inducements against the National Assembly by the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC to be holistically investigated.
It said that indicted persons after the investigations, should be arrested, prosecuted and punished by the competent Court of law whilst every Naira siphoned from the NDDC by either the discredited Interim Management Committee of the Commission or the National Assembly Committees should be retrieved and returned to the coffers of the Commission for the purpose of infrastructural development and transformations of the marginalized oil producing States belonging to the NDDC catchment areas.
HURIWA noted that the media warfare going on by both the Interim Management Committee of the NDDC and the National Assembly’s Committees has made it imperative that all parties in the show of shame must be suspended pending an outcome of a wholly independent investigation by a credible platform such as a high profile Judicial commission of Inquiry to be headed by a respected Jurist of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and other representatives of the Civil society, academia, security/Defence and the Supreme court of Nigeria.
It further states; “A situation whereby there is a free for all full scale media battles by the warring parties drawn from the Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission and the relevant committees of the Niger Delta Development Commission in the National Assembly, there will never be a credible investigations of either the NDDC by the so called Interim Management Committee of the Niger Delta Development Commission put in place by the President for the purposes of carrying out forensic audits of the Commission or the relevant committees of the National Assembly which has launched a separate probe of the Interim Management Committee of the Commission over allegations of theft of N40 billion”.
