Increase funding for Code of Conduct Bureau

SIR: Going by the details of the 2022 federal government budget submitted to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari in February 2021, the anti-corruption organizations which includes the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) are to get a total of N57.6 billion in 2022. This fund is to help the fight against corruption in Nigeria.

Unfortunately, figures indicate that funding has only been of benefit to six out of the seven anti-corruption bodies. The responsibilities of Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) in particular continue to suffer from inadequate funding.  This in turn has hampered its effectiveness in carrying out its duties as relating to its mandate to enforce the code of conduct among public officers.

The inadequate funding of the CCB has also affected its workers badly. For instance, an online medium, Premium Times, in a recent interview with some of the workers observed that the workers had one complaint in common which was the fact that they had not been paid their salaries in months.

One of the staff admitted that due to their unpaid salaries, he now finds it difficult to provide food for his wife and children. Another staff member at the agency’s annex at Asokoro area of Abuja, also said most personnel of the CCB have more or less become beggars as a result of their unpaid salaries. The deplorable situation was somewhat corroborated by the chairman of the CCB, Mohammed Isah, when, during a press conference held in Abuja, he admitted that their staff are not only poorly paid but going through difficult times. He also stated that they have less than 800 personnel across the country for 10 million public officers whom they are investigating their assets, and that there would be huge dangers ahead if new persons are not recruited to replace the deceased and retired officers.

According to an annual report by the Centre for Social Justice, Abuja, the annual budget allocation of the CCB between 2010 and 2020 showed that the average annual running costs (total recurrent expenditure minus personnel cost) of the CCB was ¦ 416,275,374 only. If this amount is divided by the five million people who are expected to declare their assets, it means that the bureau budgeted ¦ 83.26 kobo per declarant.

Yet, it is common knowledge that the duties of the CCB are capital intensive.

The government should endeavour to increase the annual budget allocated to the bureau. It needs money to build and maintain their office accommodation, pay the salaries of their officers regularly, and to purchases buses to convey the workers to work. In short, the bureau can do with more modern tools to aid its work. All of these will go a long way to help the bureau to effectively discharge its mandate of fighting corruption.