Asset Declaration: We’ve not received petition against any Kwara civil servant – CCB

The Kwara State Director of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Mrs. Ayobami Afolabi has said the office is not after anybody and it had not received any petition regarding workers in Kwara State, adding that it has gone around local government and schools in the state to sensitise them on how to fill the CCB forms.

She added that the “The President, Vice President, Senate President, his deputy, all the National Assembly members, Speakers, Governors, Deputy Governors, Commissioners, Council Chairmen and their members, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Inspector General of Police (IGP), his deputies, Police commissioners, among others have all declared their asset. None is exempted, everybody is captured.

According to her, CCB will soon extend the asset declaration services to the private sectors in the state.

Only government officials and politicians holding public offices are mostly required to declare their asset at the time of their appointment to public offices.

Mrs Afolabi, who spoke with National Pilot shortly after a sensitszation lecture with the administrative staff of the Kwara State House of Assembly, noted that the bureau will soon extend the services to the private sectors in the state and the country generally in order to improve the process of accountability and transparency in the governance of the country.

Earlier, while addressing staff at the plenary of the assembly complex, Afolabi said the bureau had undertook similar exercises in federal agencies, organisations and local governments in the state among others.

She listed some of the agencies to include College of Education, Oro, Kwara State Polytechnic, Ilorin, Federal Polytechnic Offa and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

Others include National Centre for Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institution (ARMTI), Nigeria Stored Products Research Institute (NSPRI) and National Centre for Agricultural Mechanisation (NCAM), Ilorin.

According to her, the Bureau has also visited Ekiti, Asa and Kaiama local governments, adding that other councils in the state will soon be visited to sensitise the workers on how to fill the CCB forms to avoid running foul in the filing process.

She said workers in the state have been complying with the process and that “the only people we have not been able to extend the CCB forms to yet are the people in the privates sector”.

But she promised the bureau “is moving very close to that area very soon and will shortly go online with the form.

She said “We are here to guide you right and we don’t want anybody to make mistake or fall victim of the CCB rules for public officers.

“You must not put your interest first as a public officer or accept more than one salary position or be chairman of several boards. What is expected of you as a retired civil servant is to accept a position meant for only one salary.

“We are all civil servants and we should not arrogate power unto ourselves. Some people can’t do anything smoothly with subordinate without punishment. We are not saying you should not correct them, but do it in corrective way and the person involved will know that you really love him/her and take to your correction.

“If you refused to declare your asset, under declare or make over declaration (anticipatory declaration), they are all serious offences and breach of the CCB rules.

“After your first declaration, at every four years, your duty is to come forward to our office and obtained form CCB I. People should not expect us to still come to them and that is why we are embarking on this tour. It’s not part of our mandate to begin to carry forms to organisations but if we are requested to come again our officers will oblige.

“Any false declaration we discovered under section 18(1) of the fifth schedule of the 1999 Constriction, there are punishment attached.

“The first is vacation from office which we don’t pray for, if the officer is a politician, he will not be able to participate in political activities for the next ten years and what he refused to declare, under declare or over declare, it will be seized and forfeited to the state government as the case may be”, she added.