President Muhammadu Buhari, his vice, Yemi Osinbajo, and the 44 ministers in the Federal Executive Council (FEC) among others would be declaring their assets before the end of the current administration.
Along with them to declare assets are all the outgoing presidential aides, the 28 state governors and their cabinet members, National Assembly and state assembly members, and local government chairmen.
According to the Special Adviser to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) Chairman on General Duties, Dr Mustapha Musa, the declaration was in line with the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, which says all public officers shall declare their assets and liabilities on the assumption of office and at the end of their tenure of office.
Musa told The Punch on Sunday that plans are underway to avail the asset forms to the outgoing officials and their successors while noting that incoming public officers have three months to submit their assets forms to the CCB.
He disclosed that public officers are required to state all properties and assets acquired within or outside the country with the value of the said assets in the currency of the country where the property is situated.
Also according to him, they are as well to declare all their assets, including money, landed property, vehicles, shares, bonds and others and the sources of the assets.
Musa, who said the asset declaration forms are online and plans are being put in place to digitalise the whole process submitted that “They (officials) are expected to declare all their assets at the point of exit, at the point of leaving office. That’s what the law says. They will submit the forms when leaving the office, you cannot submit assets declaration forms while in office.
So, it is at the point of entrance and point of exit. That is what the constitution says, that is what the Code of Conduct Bureau Act says under section 15. The same thing applies to those who are about to come into government but have three months to declare.
The officials are expected to get the forms from the bureau and in fact, they can even go online. We cannot stop issuing the forms because they are online but very soon, we will stop the hard copy and ask them to make their declaration online.
Answering the attitude of outgoing public officers to the collection of the forms, he stated that “It depends on the mindset but because the law says at the point of exit, so if they pick it now, they cannot submit it until they are about to leave the office. They still have two months to go, so even if they fill out the forms now, they cannot give them to us.
Speaking about the prosecution of defaulters, Musa added that “We are prosecuting and we are securing convictions. We prosecute in thousands. We have hundreds of cases before the tribunal. We prosecute daily. The Code of Conduct Bureau is the only body empowered by the constitution to prosecute cases of breaches of the code of conduct for public officers.
At the tribunal, it is only the judiciary body that has the power to prosecute public officers. So, the tribunal is always our hope. I cannot give you the figure but there are many including all erring public officials.
What we do majorly is to see that public officers keep to the code of conduct of public officers. We enlighten public officers where we target local, government, state government and MDAs. We are targeting them for compliance, not for prosecution. However, the power to prosecute is there. The tribunal is there.
However, it was learnt that an official of the CCB who spoke on condition of anonymity confided in The Punch that the forms would be ready for issuance before the middle of April or early May.
The CCB official said “Because of difficulty in tracking those who might disappear after leaving office, we do start the issuance of form CCB1 before the expiration of the term of office. We will start issuing forms this month for the incoming (officials) who could fill and return completed assets declaration forms before they are sworn in. The process will most likely commence middle of this month or early May.’
