Labour, rights groups demand corruption crackdown

Civil rights bodies and the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) have demanded deeper and wider government probes into allegations of corruption in the national assembly, AFP reported on Friday. NLC President Adams Oshiomhole said the union would “insist” that the lower house be investigated, as was the Senate. The congress, which represents the country’s leading trade unions, vowed to “continue the struggle to ensure that everybody is under the law, not above it”. The Campaign for Democracy, headed by Beko Ransome-Kuti, called for the prosecution of former Senate president Chuba Okadigbo, who was forced from office last week for corruption and abuse of his position. The rights group called on the country’s 109 senators to return some 1.5 million naira (US $13,700) received to furnish their government-provided homes, over the 3.5 million naira officially granted in 1999, AFP reported. It quoted an unnamed senator as saying last week that his colleagues had received 1.5 million naira over the budgeted 3.5 million naira. The Civil Liberties Organisation, AFP added, called for the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo to publish official reports into corruption under past governments and details of contracts it has awarded so far, especially those given out by the Ministry of Works and Housing for road-building and road-repair. During military rule, the issuance of contracts was seen as one of the surest ways well placed officials could steal money undetected. The CLO has asked Obasanjo, who campaigned on promises to fight corruption in Nigeria, to prosecute all senators accused of wrongdoing by a house investigations committee. Obasanjo has always said there would be “no sacred cow” in the pursuing of justice during his term of office.