The Nation Newspaper

Tag: The Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA)

  • Recovered funds

    Recovered funds

    •Anti-graft agencies should do more

    The figures released by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) on recovery of funds by the anti-corruption agencies are very impressive. They indicate that the war against corruption has been revved up under the President Bola Tinubu administration.

    At a news conference by the Strategic Communication Inter-Agency Policy Committee in Abuja, the Director of Legal Services in ONSA, Zakari Mijinyawa, disclosed that, in 2024 alone, the anti-graft agencies had recovered so much in cash and property and secured 3,488 convictions, describing it as an “unprecedented milestone.”

    In cash terms, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was credited with legally recovering N277b and $105.968m. The EFCC also secured the forfeiture of an estate of 753 duplexes, while the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has been monitoring about 1,500 projects. Both agencies, according to the official, succeeded in securing the conviction of 3,455 persons for corrupt practices during the same period. Mijinyawa also said four former governors and three former ministers were currently on trial in different courts. He, however, did not give their names. 

    Laudable as this is, there is a lot of room for improvement. It is not enough to announce that unnamed former governors and ex-ministers are being prosecuted. If the trial is in open court, as in the case of former Kogi State governor Yahaya Bello that is common knowledge, all prosecution must be in public. If common criminals and petty thieves could be paraded even after such action had been declared illegal in some states, people suspected to have abused their offices to help themselves to public assets do not deserve such protection.

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    Even if an agreement was reached to settle out of court, the charges have to be entered in court, plea taken and the final terms have to be reported and approved in the interest of accountability and transparency. For the sake of uniformity, the procedure for plea bargain should be made standard to guide all judicial officers

    Importantly, the disclosure that so much was recovered as proceeds of corruption is inadequate because it is unknown how much was left unrecovered. The anti-graft agencies should go beyond recovering what had been lost through the porous and weak public accounting process to block leakages.

    About 23 years after former President Olusegun Obasanjo established the EFCC, a stable legal framework ought to have been in place to check grand corruption in the land. The World Justice Project had estimated last year that about N550b was funnelled out of public coffers, thus hindering socio-economic development of Nigeria.

    We are also concerned about the use to which the recovered money would be put. In the past, there have been cases of re-looting of looted funds. Unless a system is put in place to ensure that all such money is used for known causes, there would always be room for corrupt officials to convert it to private use. It is reassuring that the current EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, has vowed to weed out the agency’s officials caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

    There are many areas calling for attention, which the authorities should pay attention to. Recovered funds could be spent on public infrastructure, for instance, including health institutions, the academia and roads, among others. A recent example was giving part of the funds for take-off of the Nigerian Education Loans Fund (NELFUND). This is commendable. There are other important government schemes crying for such intervention.

    We look forward to more cases of the use of recovered funds for national development. The anti-corruption agencies should intensify their efforts to recover funds looted from public coffers.

  • ONSA acknowledges improved crisis response across MDAs

    ONSA acknowledges improved crisis response across MDAs

    The Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) has acknowledged improved crisis response across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government in dealing with terrorism and addressing chemical and biological threats.

    The Director of the Presidential  Crisis Communication Command and Control Centre (PC4), domiciled in ONSA, Rear Admiral Robert Obey, disclosed this yesterday while conducting a simulation exercise code name “Rapid Response 1”, at the Idu Train Station in Abuja.

    The simulation exercise was designed to enhance the skills and preparedness of crisis management agencies to respond effectively to potential terror attacks in confined spaces.

    Admiral Obeya expressed satisfaction with the steadily improving response times of the agencies with each successive simulation exercise.

    “I will rate them seven over ten because at the beginning their response time was a bit slow but later it all picked up so based on that I am going to make recommendations of the sectorisation of the areas because right now all the security agencies are coming from their locations and barracks to this area and these distances might be too much but if we sectorised, we will now have troops in their sectors and any sector that is close by will now take charge of the operations while the remaining ones will come as backup.  That will be one of the recommendations for the next exercise to improve on the response time,” he said.

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    Admiral Obeya stated that, so far, they have successfully fostered synergy among all security agencies in line with the National Crisis Management Doctrine, recognizing that no single agency can address terrorist threats alone.

    “Previously, most of the agencies were operating on their own as there was no document to bring all of us together but since 2016, the National Crisis Management Doctrine was promulgated and it also used the whole of government approach where all Ministries, Departments and Agencies are brought together to train in times of crisis.  If you observed today, you will see that all the agencies – Police, NCDC, NEMA, the Armed Forces are working together. So that is the synergy that we all wanted. We have always said that there is no agency that can do it alone,” he said.

    In her remarks, the Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Mrs. Zubaida Umar, reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to providing swift responses, including first aid and evacuation services, in the event of a terror attack or natural disaster.

    “What you have witnessed today is a simulation exercise whereby whenever there is an attack, we are able to come in and see how we can assist in terms of evacuation and mass casualties management. You have seen step-by-step reaction from all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies. We went through quite a number of types of disasters from biochemical disaster to the banditry that you witnessed and you saw the moment where NEMA stepped in to provide first aid and evacuation services,” she said.

    The Rapid Response exercises covered a range of crisis scenarios, including health emergencies, hostage-taking, terrorism and banditry as well as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) attacks.