ICPC recovers N13bn from MDAs

The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission on Monday in Abuja said it had recovered the sum of N13bn from some select Ministries, Departments and Agencies.The amount was recovered through its System Studies and Review of the agencies.A statement on Monday by the commissions Head (Enlightenment Department), Mr. Mike Sowe, quoted the ICPCs Secretary, Mr. Elvis Oglafa, as saying this in a paper he presented at a roundtable on the economic transformation agenda of the Federal Government.The roundtable was jointly organised by the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and the African Institute of Applied Economics.The ICPC secretary identified over-dependence on oil as a major revenue earner as a major challenge in dealing with corruption in Nigeria.He said, The ICPC believes that there is not only enough evidence of corruption in Nigeria but that corruption is also an impediment to Nigerias development; therefore the option we present to this gathering is to help us fight it.Oglafa said the Independent Commission Against Corruption of Hong Kong had an average of one investigator to 5,000 people and a budget of $12.30 per/capita to fight corruption while the ICPC had a staff strength of 534 in a country of about 167 million people and a per capita budget of 0.3 US cents to fight graft.The ICPC, according to him, is happy with the attempt by the National Planning Commission to ensure that all the 36 states establish their branches and Boards of Statistics, which, if accomplished, will create the necessary data that will ensure adequate planning.He said it would tackle corruption and cases of abandoned projects after billions of Naira had been spent on them.He reiterated the commissions readiness to partner with the Office of the Special Adviser on Monitoring and Evaluation to ensure that graft was eliminated to enable national development plans to achieve their key objectives.
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