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An Igbo group identified as Ndigbo Unity Forum (NUF) worldwide, which is a non-governmental organization, has advocated instituting death penalty for looters of public funds, as a way of eradicating the corruption which is bedeviling the country.
The call was made in a statement jointly signed by NUF’s President, Mr. Augustine Chukwudum, and Secretary, Mr. Tony Igbokwe, respectively on Sunday, in Enugu.
Meanwhile, they also called on the National Assembly to remove the immunity clause from the constitution, so that sitting governors and other top-ranking public officials could be probed while still in office.
‘If found guilty, he will be prosecuted, this will go a long way in stopping the ongoing daily looting, especially at the state level,’ NUF said.
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It urged President Muhammad Buhari to put in more stringent measures and seriousness in the ongoing anti-graft war, because some public office holders, by their words and actions, think the anti-graft war is a ruse.
‘We also demand that institutions like EFCC, ICPC, and the judiciary be strengthened so that no one can be above the law as it is today.
‘Everybody must be treated equally as it is in the U.S, Britain, Canada and other countries of the world.
‘By so doing, justice must prevail, not in a case where Ex-Managing Director of Bank PHB, Francis Atuche, who stole billions of naira, was recently sent to jail for a term of six years imprisonment.
‘While someone who stole vegetable that was less than N1,000 value was abandoned for more than five years as an Awaiting Trial Mate (ATM)’, the NGO added.
The statement noted that it was a big irony for looters of public funds to be moving with heavy police escorts while enjoying their loot inside the country.
‘The common people, whose wealth was stolen, are dying daily of hunger, lack of potable water, bad roads, no functional hospital, and no standard primary and secondary schools,’ the NGO said.
It recalled that in February 2020, NUF issued a statement calling on the EFCC to probe both present and ex-governors of the South-East, over their alleged mismanagement and looting of over N20 trillion between May 1999 to January 2020.
‘Up till date, no single ex-governor has been convicted and most of them have come to believe that President Buhari’s anti-corruption war is a ruse,’ NUF said.
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