A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Ndarani Mohammed, has called for the ban of retired civil servants from contesting elective positions for at least one year so that anti-corruption agencies can properly investigate them.
The SAN, said all heads of Ministeries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that are retired, or have been relieved of their jobs should also be investigated whether they are contesting or not.
According to the senior lawyer, it has become imperative to checkmate the financial activities of some of these civil servants who retire from public service and jump straight into politics, stressing that “corruption remains one of the greatest obstacles to Nigeria’s development”.
“It calls for stronger accountability measures to ensure that public resources are not wasted or diverted into a few private pockets.
“Consequently, people with political ambitions are already beginning to throw their hats into the ring all the way from the local government tier to the presidency.
“These will be exciting times, indeed, but Nigerians generally seem to be losing sight of a fundamental flaw in the whole process” Ndarani stated.
He noted that among those expected to emerge as political gladiators will be, as is always the case, retired civil servants, or those who resigned from public service or political appointments.
Ndarani insisted that the tendency for public servants in Nigeria to plunder the nation’s treasury with shocking impunity during their employment is “alarming and this is because they want to contest for political offices after retirement”.
“This gets progressively worse as the date of their disengagement approaches.
“Most of them do this to amass vast amounts of money with which to fund their election campaigns.
“These elections usually see them work their way into lofty political positions that would further enhance their ability to further milk the nation, often with little or no accountability,” the SAN stated.
In view of the foregoing, senior lawyer said one of the fundamental measures to be put in place is to ensure that all public servants are investigated on retirement.
Additionally, he posited that political office holders should be investigated too, whether they are coming back for second tenure or not, to know the sources of their current assets and incomes.
“Even in the best of climes, politics is an expensive undertaking, and Nigeria cannot be an exception, so any one who retires from public service and almost right away jumps into partisan politics, deserves forensic examination, he maintained.
“We are now getting ready for the 2027 general elections; Anti-Graft agencies and INEC have enough time to investigate all the above mentioned interest groups, to curb corruption during and after elections,” Mohammed said.
The SAN urged President Bola Tinubu to apply the provision of section 315 of 1999 of the Constitution (as amended) to reflect all his legal opinion, to save Nigeria from electing bad and corrupt leaders into political offices come 2027.
“I equally advise our President to create an enabling platform that will prevent retired public office holders from being able to use looted funds to contest elections” Ndarani said.
