Hot SourceAlex Enumah in Abuja
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria(SAN), Mr Ndarani Mohammed, has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to urgently put machinery in place that would prevent the looting of the nation’s treasury for the 2027 general election.
Besides, Mohammed urged the president to also make a law that would prevent public office holders who newly retired from service from contesting for any elective positions for at least one year.
This, he said, would enable anti-corruption agencies to thoroughly investigate their tenure in office.
The senior lawyer made the appeal while speaking with journalists yesterday in Abuja.
According to him, electioneering is practically upon us and among those expected to emerge as political gladiators will be as is always the case, retired civil servants, or those who resigned from public service or political appointments.
“The tendency for public servants in Nigeria to plunder the nation’s treasury with shocking impunity during their employment is alarming and this is because they want to contest for political offices after retirement.
“This gets progressively worse as the date of their disengagement approaches. Most of them do this to amass vast amounts of money with which to fund their election campaigns.
“These elections usually see them work their way into lofty political positions that would further enhance their ability to further milk the nation, often with little or no accountability”, Mohammed stated.
To prevent looting of the nation’s treasury, the senior lawyer said President Tinubu should ensure that all public servants are investigated on retirement, adding that political office holders should be investigated too whether they are coming back for second tenure or not to learn the sources of their current assets and incomes.
While observing that the Code of Conduct was put in place to checkmate the tendency for public office holders to loot the public treasury while in office, he lamented that the measure does not seem to have been effective enough.
“Retired civil servants should be barred from contesting for any elective positions for at least one year to give the anti-corruption agencies the opportunity to investigate them.
“All heads of MDAs that are retired, or have been relieved of their jobs should also be investigated whether they are contesting or not,” he added.
While advising Nigerians to play their part by holding leaders accountable and participating actively in civic life, he urged President Tinubu to apply the provision of section 315 of 1999 of the Constitution (as amended) to reflect all his above legal opinion, to save Nigeria from electing bad and corrupt leaders into political offices come 2027.
“I equally advise our president to create an enabling platform that will prevent retired public office holders from being able to use looted funds to contest elections,” he added.
