{"id":5924,"date":"2015-09-02T06:56:42","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T06:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=5924"},"modified":"2015-09-02T07:18:18","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T07:18:18","slug":"make-public-asset-declaration-compulsory-for-all-key-govt-officials-ex-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=5924","title":{"rendered":"Make public asset declaration compulsory for all key govt. officials, Ex-Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"babalola\"<\/a>\"Delta<\/a>A former Minister of State for Finance, Remi Babalola, on Tuesday proposed the expansion of the whistle blowing and fraud protocols by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to include payment of 10 percent of the total value of undeclared assets by public officials to whistle-blowers\/informants, if successfully prosecuted.
\nMr. Babalola said public asset declaration should be made compulsory for all principal officers in the executive arm of government, from the president to the ministers, permanent secretaries, directors-general, and heads of parastatals and agencies to curb the alarming rate of corruption in the country.
\nBesides, the former minister urged the Federal Government to ensure that state-owned oil corporation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, publishes its audited accounts and quarterly statements like all listed companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE.
\nHe was presenting a paper titled \u201cAchieving the Nigeria of Our Dream: The Responsibility of Professional Accountants\u201d, at the opening of the 45th Annual Accountants Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN.
\nThe former minister, who is the Chairman\/Chief Strategist of Alternative Capital Partners Limited, attributed the alarming rate of corruption in the system to the culture of impunity that had been entrenched in the country.
\n\u201cOur culture of impunity is the bane of the entrenched corruption in our society. The value destruction and corruption undermine any economic development or social change we may aspire for our nation,\u201d Mr. Babalola said.
\n\u201cMismanagement and misallocation of resources, coupled with an unprecedented level of corruption have been at their highest in the history of our nation in the last six years. Performance or success in public space was measured by the conversion rate of public funds into private accounts. It looks as if democracy has been substituted with kleptocracy,\u201d he added.
\nWhile calling for concerted action by the National Assembly, judiciary, media, labour unions, civil society organisations, student unions and professional groups against corruption, Mr. Babalola decried the dearth of transparency in the oil sector, particularly the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.
\nExpressing regrets that the NNPC\u2019s core competence had been reduced to importation of refined petroleum products and payment subsidies to bogus oil marketers, Mr. Babalola wondered why it was so difficult for it to compete with its contemporaries, like PETROBRAS of Brazil and PETRONAS of Malaysia.
\n\u201cIt is counter intuitive that we deliberately ensure that receipts and proceeds into the nation\u2019s treasury are not accounted for. Such has been our contempt for process transparency that an incumbent governor of an operationally and legally independent central bank, who publicly alerted the nation, was forced out of a fixed tenure,\u201d Mr. Babalola said.
\nOn the recent Federal Government\u2019s bailout for the States, the former finance minister advised that it should have been done in line with Section 41 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, pointing out that as good a gesture as it was, it may impose a moral hazard on the states to continue with financial recklessness leading to financial insolvency.
\nWhy are we borrowing to pay salaries in stark violation of Section 41 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act?\u201d he queried. \u201cRescuing the States is a necessary gesture, but how and on what terms is \u2018business as usual\u2019?\u201d
\nHe said each state should have been treated as separate entities with peculiar conditionalities, adding that entities like ICAN and other professional bodies should have been involved independently to assess and recommend terms and conditions, just like Greece did.
\nMr. Babalola called for more financial prudence and disclosure by professional accountants, while urging professional accountants to be discipline, knowledge, ethics and integrity in their practice at all times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former Minister of State for Finance, Remi Babalola, on Tuesday proposed the expansion of the whistle blowing and fraud protocols by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to include payment of 10 percent of the total value of undeclared assets by public officials to whistle-blowers\/informants, if successfully prosecuted. Mr. Babalola said public asset […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[61,602,338,601,603],"class_list":["post-5924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-efcc","tag-ican","tag-nnpc","tag-nse","tag-remi-babalola"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pollution.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1xy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5924"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5928,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5924\/revisions\/5928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}