The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Plateau has criticised the setting up of a Judicial Commission by the state government to probe the financial and other transactions of the immediate past regime.
“The step will achieve nothing; it will serve as a conduit for the misuse of very limited resources,” Mr Damishi Sango, the party’s chairman, said at a press briefing in Jos on Tuesday.
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The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Gov. Simon Lalong had, on August 17, inaugurated a Judicial Commission to investigate all transactions carried out by the immediate past administration.
The commission is expected to ascertain and establish all financial allocations, funds, grants or monetary interventions and revenues, which accrued to Plateau from the Federal Government, international institutions or donor agencies during the period.
Sango, who described the exercise as “an effort in ”futility,” declared that the commission would be a conduit pipe where state resources would be siphoned and wasted.
”The setting up of a judicial commission to probe activities of the immediate past government is an exercise in futility; an avenue to syphon government money.
”We are not against probe, but for God’s sake, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) is there to carry out all these checks, so why then waste tax payers money on a commission?
”The monies that will be used to service this commission can be channeled into payment of salaries and pension areas in the state.
”So, to us, this is just another way in which government wants to settle some of its supporters,” he alleged.
The chairman also alleged that some government officials in the present administration were already being quizzed by the EFCC on allegations of corruption and illegal diversion of public funds.
”Government should come out and tell us what happened to the funds that disappeared at the state Muslim Pilgrims Board.
”They want to probe the transactions of the previous administration when their hands are not clean,” Sango said.
He advised the government to embark on programmes and projects that would have direct bearing on the lives of the citizens, “rather than wasting resources on less important activities”.
In his reaction, Mr Mark Longyen, Special Assistant to Lalong on Media and Publicity, said that the setting up of the commission became necessary to “unearth the mess that the PDP government bequeathed to the APC administration”.
“A lot of money was looted and we want to get the root of that,” he told NAN. (NAN)