Reports have emerged that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is making moves to return, retired former Justice of the Supreme Court, Abdu Aboki as the chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
According to PremiumTimes, Presidency sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr Tinubu has penned down Mr Aboki’s name to replace the incumbent ICPC chair, Bolaji Owasanoye, whose five-year tenure remains about six months.
The Herald reports that Abdu Aboki, who hails from Kano State, retired from the Supreme Court bench after clocking the mandatory retirement age of 70 on 5 August 2022.
Is Abdu Aboki Qualified To Be ICPC Chair?
Founded in 2000 by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration to tackle official corruption that had blighted the image of Nigeria which was just out of military rule, the ICPC has had four substantive chairpersons.
To be qualified to be an ICPC chairperson, the candidate must be qualified to be a judge of Nigeria’s superior courts of record.
Section 4 of the law establishing the anti-graft agency, the ICPC Act 2000 says, “The (ICPC) chairman shall be a person who has held or is qualified to hold office as a judge of a superior court of record in Nigeria.”
The law in section 6 further says, “the chairman shall and other members of the commission shall be persons of proven integrity,” and shall be appointed by the president subject to Senate confirmation.
This means that any person with “proven integrity” and who has been called to the Nigerian Bar for at least 10 years, the minimum qualification to be appointed a judge of a superior court of record in Nigeria, is qualified to be the ICPC chairperson.
Verdict
Abdu Aboki is, no doubt, qualified for the position, unlike Mr Tinubu’s proposed pick for the sister anti-corruption agency, the EFCC, Olanipekun Olukoyede, who does not have the number of years of cognate experience required by the EFCC Act to chair the agency.