Yar’Adua wants immunity clause removed from constitution

Oke Muogbo, Abuja - 25.01.2008

PRESIDENT Umaru Yar’Adua has advocated the removal of the immunity clause from the constitution when it is amended. The clause prevents the arrest and prosecution of the president, vice president and governors and their deputies.

President Yar’Adua, speaking late Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said that he supported the removal of the clause from the constitution.

The position of the President was contained in a statement signed by his spokesman, Segun Adeniyi, made available to Nigerian Tribune in Abuja on Thursday.President Yar’Adua said that he was confident that these public officials would soon be stripped of their current immunity from prosecution.

“I have confidence that the next constitutional amendment will strip these public officials of this immunity and I am personally in support of that,” he said.

The President stated that he expected the removal of the immunity clause from the constitution to facilitate the work of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies, which, he said, had been granted “total and complete independence of action” by his administration.

“One thing I have done is to give them total and complete independence of action. The institutions are directly under me in the Presidency, so when I assumed office, I called their chairmen and told them that they have total independence to go and act within the law: that is the only condition I gave, that everything they do must be within the law establishing them and within the laws of the federation,” President Yar’Adua said.

He also told his audience that in furtherance of the ongoing war against corruption in Nigeria, the Federal Government would soon introduce new legislation that would make all violations and disrespect for due process punishable by law.

“We now have a situation in which people award contracts without caring whether they have enough money to complete the project and because of this, there are lots of abandoned projects all over the country, in fact some going into billions of dollars. This is the kind of disrespect for established regulations and procedures that feeds corruption.

“Our decision to fight corruption properly and have respect for law, order and due process will now make such acts of omission or commission punishable by law, and that will clean the system and make sure that whatever business dealings government enters into, we have the ability to abide by the covenant we signed.

“In fact, that is the path of honour, not only for any government but also for companies that are operating in Nigeria,” President Yar’Adua said.

The President said that his administration would also implement other measures “to ensure that opportunities to commit corruption are reduced to the barest minimum so that any public official who commits an act of corruption will know he has done it as a deliberate attempt, not because he has an opportunity to commit corruption.”