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Corrupt politicians
who plan to run for offices in the coming elections will be stopped by
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the anti-graft agency
said in Abuja yesterday.

Farida Waziri, the
chairman of the commission, stated this while receiving board members
of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) at the EFCC headquarters. She said
that the anti-graft agency will prevent corrupt politicians from
contesting any public office in 2011. According to her, the anti-graft
agency would collaborate with the police, the State Security Service,
the Independent National Electoral Commission and the CCB to jointly
produce a security report on every candidate that shows interests in
the elections. “Based on their security reports, they will be stopped
at the right time,” she said. “There is no way that we will allow the
political parties to field corrupt people. Legally, we are empowered to
look into some of these issues.”

Mrs Waziri also
said that the EFCC will use ongoing investigations to prevent indicted
officials from running for office. “How do we allow these people to
come back and say that they are going to lead us? The world will laugh
at us,” she said. “We see that some of them are already printing
posters and I will see how they are going to work that out. We are not
going to allow that. We want to ensure that only the proper persons
will represent us.”

Past offenders to be tried

The Chairman of the
board of the CCB, Sam Saba, said that former ministers who failed to
properly declare their assets will be facing a tribunal soon. “Some
past ministers did not declare their assets,” he said. “Their names
have been compiled and we’ve sent the names to the Federal Ministry of
Justice because we have to get their approval before inviting them to
face the tribunal.” Mrs Waziri also noted that some corrupt persons,
who have intentions to loot public funds, deliberately declare more
assets than they have, and urged the CCB to properly investigate all
declared assets. “Some with intentions to steal put fake items in the
forms,” she said. “Some claim that they have houses in the US, UK.”

Responding, Mr Saba said that his team had settled down to work
adding that the CCB has already noted that most public officials,
especially the legislators, keep foreign accounts which they have not
declared to the bureau.