— Swears-in new aides, NPC, ICPC officials
President Goodluck Jonathan has sworn-in the chairman and two commissioners of the National Population Commission (NPC) as well as a commissioner of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).
The new NPC officials are Mr. Eze Iheoma as chairman and and Bala Abanye and Aliyu Daniel Kwali as commissioners while the ICPC new commissioner is Bako Abdullahi.
The president also sworn-in Mrs. Fidelia Njeze as Special Adviser on NEPAD and Senator Suleiman Makanjuola Ajadi as Special Adviser on National Assembly. Speaking during the inauguration, the president hit back at critics of the present administration’s fight against corrupt practices and other related offences, saying most of the critics are very corrupt.
He said: “The society is so funny, that these days, anybody who wants to claim any element of credibility at all, will go to the television and attack government for corruption. The president’s body language shows that he is not fighting corruption or he is not ready to fight corruption. And sometimes is even the very corrupt people that are making these statements because if you attack government you are insulated, you become an angel.
“If you want to be an angel, just attack the government, so whatever you have done is covered. So you must prove to Nigerians and show to Nigerians that you are working. Recently, the EFCC published the list of about 250 people they have convicted and that is a huge number of people and they said the government is not fighting corruption. How many countries have convicted half that number of people within a space of time?”
The president urged the anti-graft agencies to keep informing Nigerians when they record conviction, stressing that the “ICPC and EFCC must make Nigerians believe that they are working.”
“I know what you are doing but not everybody knows what you are doing. Ordinarily, these are agencies whose activities are not supposed to be made too loud because you don’t celebrate a situation where you send 100 or 200 Nigerians to prison,” he said.