The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, on Monday visited the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) for the verification of his declared assets and liabilities.
Mr Fagbemi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), visited the bureau around 3 p.m. and left shortly after.
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He said the visit was to verify the assets he declared to the CCB after his appointment as a minister.
“I have submitted my declaration of assets form. There will be a necessary follow-up of verification, and that is why I am here to verify what I have declared, and for me to have the opportunity to clarify certain areas, either grey areas or minor mistakes that may have occurred,” he told reporters shortly after the exercise at the CCB in Abuja.
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The CCB chairperson, Abdullahi Bello, said the CCB has begun the verification of the assets declared by all political officials.
“Apart from asset declaration, the code of conduct will also verify those asset declarations,” he said. “So what we are doing right now is that we are asking all public officers to come and verify their assets.”
Mr Bello explained that the exercise is to verify the assets declared by public officials, not an investigation of any sort.
“This is one of the key things that we want to put out there. If you declare your assets, then we are only asking you to verify that it is your own. Do you own it? Or does it exist? Those are the key questions that we ask for all public servants. And once you have done that, there is no issue at all with that process. The verification is separate. Investigation is separate,” he explained.
Mr Fagbemi also called on other political appointees to heed the CCB’s call to verify their assets.
“It’s just to verify, it’s not an investigation,” he said. “But even if it is an investigation, it is still within the competence or the mandate of the bureau to do that. As the chief law officer of the nation, I believe that example is better than precept.”
Future of asset verification
The CCB chairperson also disclosed that the CCB is currently working towards replacing the paper-based asset declaration process with a digital system designed to ease the asset declaration and verification exercise.
He said the new design and development of the new system has reached an advanced stage and could be deployed early next year.
According to Mr Bello, the new digital system will automatically cross-check public officers’ declarations against multiple national databases, including those maintained the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“What we have done is that we want to make sure that all public servants can go and declare the assets online, and then even the verification process is online now, because we are going to link it up with so many other databases. For example, the BVN and the tax authorities,” he said.
He said the new Asset and Liability Declaration System will detect undeclared companies, properties and income streams in real time, reducing reliance on manually filled forms.
He added that the new system will help the bureau verify and analyse declared assets, saving efforts and resources.
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“Even the public servants themselves, it’s going to be easier for them to go and declare their assets online, and then they don’t have to come to our offices to declare their assets. And that’s one of the things we are doing,” he added.
The Nigerian constitution mandates public officers to declare their assets on assumption of office and at the end of their tenure.
The asset declaration, verification and prosecution of violators is saddled with the CCB, according to the constitution and the Code of Conduct Bureau/Tribunal Act.
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