Declare Your Assets, Respect Rights Of Nigerians, SERAP Tells Tinubu

Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged the president-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu to make public details of his assets, income, investments, liabilities, and interests to encourage others to do the same.

SERAP also asked the president-elect to commit to respect human rights, media freedom, the rule of law and the country’s judiciary.

The civil society organisation made the demands in an open letter dated May 27, 2023 and signed by SERAP deputy director Kolawole Oluwadare.

SERAP, in the letter, said the promise made by Tinubu to kill corruption is nothing new because the outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari used a similar hollow anticorruption phrase in 2015.

It stated that as Nigerians witnessed for eight years, Buhari neither ‘killed corruption’ nor obeyed court judgements on transparency and accountability.

The organisation maintained that if Tinubu widely published details of his assets, income, investments and liabilities and encouraged his vice-president-elect and others to do the same, it would allow Nigerians to know his worth and the worth of other public officials.

SERAP said, “If your election is upheld by the judiciary, your government can use transparency in asset declarations as a means of promoting public accountability and ending systemic corruption in the country.

“Buhari’s broken promises to make specific details of his assets public and to ‘kill corruption’ have opened up the country’s political and electoral processes to a money free-for-all, discouraged political participation and contributed to impunity for corruption.

“Although President Buhari’s march to Aso Rock was predicated, in large part, on his campaign rhetoric to ‘kill corruption’, corruption remains widespread among high-ranking public officials and in ministries, departments and agencies [MDAs].”

It said effective enforcement and implementation of court judgements is critical to the national interest and to the restoration of the rule of law in the country.

SERAP affirmed that the incoming government has a responsibility to improve citizens’ trust and confidence in government, saying it will be difficult for the new government to be trusted if its leaders do not come clean about their assets and incomes.

“Disclosure of income, assets and conflicts of interest can serve as powerful tools to draw attention to the abuse of public office, help prosecute corrupt offenders and create a culture of scrutiny in the public sector that deters corruption,” it said.

According to SERAP, the Buhari administration also refused to obey the judgements by Justice Hadiza Rabiu Shagari ordering his government to tell Nigerians about the stolen asset it allegedly recovered, with details of the amounts recovered and another judgement by Justice Mohammed Idris, ordering his government to publish details on the spending of stolen funds recovered by successive governments since 1999.