Dogara on anti-graft war: We are dealing with leaves and fruits but not the root

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, has faulted the approach employed in fighting the war against corruption.

He said with immense “emphasis” placed on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the country was only dealing with symptoms of corruption whereas “corruption is like a tree”.

The speaker said this on Thursday when a delegation from the fiscal responsibility commission (FRC) visited him in Abuja.

Dogara was querying the non-disclosure of interests accruing to Nigeria’s foreign reserve accounts which he said should be under the custody of agencies like FRC “for dissemination to the public when necessary”.

The speaker said Nigeria earns interest on foreign reserves like Botswana but the country has such interest as its second highest revenue source after natural resources.

He, therefore, wondered why the Central Bank of Nigeria does not declare interests accruing on the foreign reserves accounts of the federation even after the house had passed a resolution calling it to do so in December 2015.

“In Nigeria, we have been asking the question, are we earning or are we just running charity with it or just leave people to manage it,” the speaker said.

“From the way we are fighting corruption, it is like emphasis is built on EFCC, but the problem with that approach that you are dealing with the symptoms of corruption.

“Once you continue to deal with the leaves and the fruits, and the root is still there, you cannot totally eliminate corruption.

“These are preventive agencies and we ought to invest more in agencies such as the Fiscal Responsibility Commission because we have to make it difficult for corruption itself to take place. Once we do that, we will be applying the remedy at the root of corruption.

“There is no limit to the kind of attention we can pay to agencies like this, because this is the right way to combat corruption itself to ensure that resources are efficiently allocated and that we have fiscal discipline.”