The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Anti-corruption; Akinloye Babajide, has said that it is not the responsibility of the government to provide scanners at the ports, instead the government should concentrate on providing conducive business environment for industry operators.
Babjide stated this yesterday at a One day Conference on Anti-corruption and prevention of revenue leakages in Nigeria's maritime/oil industries, organized by the Association Maritime Journalists of Nigeria (AMJON) in Lagos.
The lawmaker advised that the government should stay out of the business aspect of the port operations, even as he maintained that it should rather formulate policies that will help the growth of the economy.
He stressed that: "On the issue of who should provide scanners, I as a person don't believe that government will get involved in the business situation, I believe that the work of the government is to formulate regulations, that is my believe. The government should make the environment conducive with whoever that is charged with that responsibility.. But for the government to dabble into the business aspect of it I don't agree with that".
He also frowned at the issue of customs parading suspects saying that it is illegal.
"If it is part of the responsibilities of the customs to prosecute the way and manner they go about, however, I am not a party to a situation where you parade a suspect because they have not been condemned. As a lawyer, they are still suspects until they are tried in court and found guilty", he said.
He however lauded the government for exhibiting enough political will to fight corruption.
"Before now, we didn’t have the political will to fight corruption which has always been the problem. But now we have seen a government which is very determined to fight it and the level at which it is been fought may not be what we want, but we have started and I believe if we continue we will get things right", he concluded.
Discussion about this post