Many public officers now make anticipatory declaration of assets to justify what to steal in office, Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ola Olukoyede, has alleged.
He cited cases of politicians falsifying their asset declaration forms by listing properties they intend to acquire while in office.
Olukoyede made the disclosures in Abuja in a goodwill message at the launch of the Virtual Tool on the Code of Conduct for Public Officers by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) in collaboration with the Technical Unit on Good Governance and Anti-corruption Reforms (TUGAR).
Painting a picture of how anticipatory asset declaration is done, the commission boss said: “There is an investigation we carried out and we discovered something not too strange that proves how criminally-smart some of our politically-exposed persons (PEP) carry out some of the various activities we investigate them for.
“I asked my boys to get the CCB form because there is something we were not clear about and we discovered one of the very big properties valued at over N3 billion that the person declared in the CCB form carried an address different from the address of the location of the property.
“I felt something was awry here; we decided to dig further and after more interrogation, we discovered that the person declared the property when the property was not in existence.
The EFCC chair said further checks showed that the individual had listed a property at No. 39 while the actual mansion was at No. 44.
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“So, while we were asking questions, eventually, we discovered what we call anticipatory declaration of assets. And that is the smart way that some of these leaders have resorted to now.
“Now, they declare what they intend to acquire by the time they are in the office before they are sworn in into the office. It is terrible. We saw that, and we felt… ‘No, this is pretty bad.”
Olukoyede added that the politician had even registered the property in the land registry before owning it and designed the mansion he planned to build there.
“Before he was sworn in, he had started thinking about the money to steal and what to do with the money,” agency boss said.
He urged the CCB leadership to take note of such criminality and intensify investigation through innovative ways to curtail corruption.
The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, said the bedrock of public service is adherence to standards and ethics of service.
He applauded the virtual tool designed by the CCB as a significant milestone in the digitization and technological investigation of public conduct.
The AGF, who believed that the tool will promote preventive compliance and awareness, urged public servants to embrace the new tool for enhanced conduct in public service.
The Head of Service, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack said: “We must leverage on technology to solve problems. It is faster, smarter and more transparent. Without conduct and ethics no reform will last. Ethical governance is not optional.
“The benefit of this tool is that it is accessible, easy to use, cost-effective and promotes transparency that enables tracking and compliance”.
CCB Chairman Abdullahi Usman Bello said the easy-to-use tool will promote accountability among public officers.