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| Last Updated: Jan 19th, 2012 - 11:25:19 |
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We support total independence of anti-corruption agencies – President Yar’Adua
Oct 28, 2009, 11:23
| | President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has said the Administration has continued to support the total independence of the nation’s anti-corruption agencies, because that is the most enduring way to drastically reduce the menace in the country.
President Yar’Adua made the declaration at an audience he granted a delegation of the Yoruba Council of Elders, who paid him a courtesy call on October 27 at the State House, Abuja.
“We continue to support the financial and moral independence of the anti-corruption agencies, as well as try to make corruption unattractive by ensuring that any one found guilty is sanctioned according to the law”, he stated.
The President said corruption required a collective effort to eradicate, and must be fought in all facets of national life, adding that “the level of corruption in our country today does not justify the sustenance of the immunity clause whatever its other merits, since there is the need to make everybody accountable for all their actions”.
Speaking on the nation’s future elections, President Yar’Adua said the Administration would do everything possible to ensure reforms in the electoral process, adding that, “I hope the new laws to be enacted from the bills I sent to the National Assembly will provide answers to the question of free and fair elections in the country”.
President Yar’Adua noted that the nation needs just and judicious disposal of electoral petitions, while the staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the Police, other security agencies and ad-hoc electoral staff must live up to their responsibility of ensuring fair elections. He added that it must be understood that national political stability is a necessary anchor for peace and that conducting an election adjudged transparent by all stakeholders is a matter of national prestige.
He said he had confidence that the Judiciary was aware of areas that needed reform in the performance of their constitutional functions.
Earlier, Major-General Adeyinka Adebayo, president of the Yoruba Council of Elders, had expressed support for the Administration, and submitted their concerns in the areas of youth unemployment, rampant corruption, road construction and rehabilitation, need for laws institutionalizing care for the aged, and long delays in concluding electoral petitions.
General Adebayo said that the YCE supported President Yar’Adua’s call for the removal of the immunity clause and made a request for a rail link between Lagos and Abuja, and also a refinery in Yoruba land, since the area consumes two-thirds of Nigeria’s petroleum products.
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