CCB vows to screen ministerial nominees

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri
ABUJA — The Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB, yesterday, said it would scrutinise the personal assets of all the nominees for ministerial appointments, stressing that it would not hesitate to commence criminal action against any of them found wanting.

Chairman of the Bureau, Chief Sam Baba, who made this disclosure in Abuja after flagging off a three-day workshop on the development of an organisational strategy for the CCB, maintained that the establishment had evolved modern techniques that would help it to effectively use assets declaration as a weapon to combat corruption in the public sector.

Meantime, the CCB boss, while fielding questions from newsmen yesterday, declined to make public the trial date of the former Governor of Lagos State, Mr Ahmed Bola Tinubu, who was accused of operating 18 foreign accounts for his family members during his tenure in office.

The Bureau had ab-initio referred the case file of the former governor to the Code of Conduct Tribunal for prosecution, insisting that his actions ran contrary to the stipulated code of conduct for public officers in the country.

In his opening remarks at the workshop which was organised in collaboration with the United Kingdom Department for International Developments, Justice for All, J4A, Baba said “the fight against official corruption is not for the CCB or other anti corruption agencies alone, it is a national crusade.

“This workshop is to provide an opportunity for the staff, management of CCB and stakeholders to discuss best approach to receiving, verifying and utilizing information declared by public officers”.

On their part, the Manager, Anti-Corruption Department of the J4A, Mrs Juliet Ibekaku, insisted that “the workshop couldn’t have come up at a better time as we await the assumption of office of new political office holders and appointment of new cabinets at the federal level and across all the states in Nigeria.