Nigerian Bar association opposes punishment for corruption

The Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) has opposed capital punishment for corruption  convicts.

  NBA’s President Augustine Alegeh (SAN), who made the position known when he received the national president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) at the Bar House in Abuja, said other countries were moving away from capital punishment.

He said the government should evolve measures to prevent people from looting the treasury, adding that the  Treasury Single Account was a measure in the right direction.

Alegeh argued that the plea bargain, which formed part of the Justice system, was a good measure of recovering stolen money.

He said if the government had applied it since 2007, a  lot of stolen funds would have been recovered.

The NBA president said: “It was on the front pages last week that corrupt people should be sent to the gallows and killed, that there should be capital punishment and I said no.

“The international trend is that every country is moving away from capital punishment. So, where the world is moving away from, why are we going there? In corruption cases, the focus is on recovering of the money. Let us recover that money and use it to develop our country and not to kill the man.

“If you kill the man and the family has the money, have we made any progress? So, let us go for what is right. For us, plea bargain, which is in our new criminal justice act, is good. If we had done plea bargain with some of the governors in 2007, we would have had more money in the system than today.

“Chelsea Hotel was seized from somebody and is now infested with rats and the man they seized it from now has New Chelsea Hotel. The one that government seized is infested with rats. Assuming that hotel was functional and the revenue going into our consolidated revenue fund or the federation account, is that not adding more money for us. They seized the hotel from someone they said embezzled money and the place is dead today. That can’t be right.

“Wherever there is corruption, it is money meant for development that has been taken away. The first thing that we should be looking at is how do we get this money and put it back into the system to aid development. Punishment should take the back stage while you reform.

‘’What we should be concerned about is what measure do we put in place to ensure that we are not looted, instead of waiting to be looted and then kill the person. We must be proactive and that is our stand. Our position is that the government should put in place measures to ensure that pilfering of government resources is curtailed.

“The Treasury Single Account being introduced by the government is a step in that direction. Let us first know where the money is, we know what we are expecting, we know the account.

“If you know that everyone is looking at that account, you cannot say that the money has not come or the money is in one account or the other. I commend government, but I think there are more steps government can take.

“For us, we believe that the present administration has taken many steps in the right direction. No man is without error or mistake, but on the whole, the government has taken the right steps in the right direction and we support the administration. As long as they continue to work in the right part, the part of getting our country back on a solid footing, we will continue to support them and offer ideas. We encourage NLC to also consider the government  along those lines”.

On accusations that lawyers often defend people accused of corruption, he said while NBA would do everyting to maintain its position on the rule of law, it is the duty of every lawyer to defend a client even when such a person pleaded guilty to the crime.

NLC President Ayuba Wabba sought partnership of the NBA leadership in the fight against corruption.