You Cannot Be A Judge In Your Own Case, House of Reps Member Oladele Tells NNPC

 

Given the public perception of NNPC as an institution which permits corruption, the Corporation should rather be concerned with taking all legitimate measures to facilitate the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s (EFCC) work of transparently investigating and prosecuting officials found to have been involved in current scandal rather than pretending to be fighting the menace on its own. Says The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Crimes, Kayode Oladele

He described the proposed NNPC’s in-house probe as pre-emptive and an attempt to underplay a very serious matter of national interest: “The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission already has a mandate to conduct investigations of this nature and should be invited to do so. The Commission has the professional capacity and wherewithal. It is wrong for any government agency to say that because it has strong reasons to believe that fraudulent activities may have taken place within its offices, that it will conduct its own probe into the matter and then hand over the culprits to the EFCC for prosecution. This is tantamount to saying you want to mark your own homework and it is not acceptable anywhere in the world”, Oladele said.

According to Oladele, matters of this nature are strictly within the purview of the EFFC which has the mandate to investigate and prosecute corruption cases. He further said that the reported internal investigation by the NNPC is not ”only against the principle of natural justice that you cannot be a judge in your own case but it is also capable of being seen by members of the public as an attempt to cover-up their own peers for the corporate interest of the senior management staff of the corporation. 

 saharareporters