One year after its inauguration, the report of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption has come out with its recommendations.

In its report from August 2015 to July 2016, the Executive Secretary, Bolaji Owasanoye, highlighted areas of concentration.

Amongst are the things that the committee maps out as sentencing guidelines for high profile cases where huge monies are trapped.

He decried the amount of monies that the Nigerian government has lost to such cases and its effect on the economy.

“If we do simple arithmetic of all those high profile cases, just add the sums and see how much you will come up with, it will be far above two trillion and because the state has not recovered the money, we will see the effect on the economy,” he said.

The chairman of the committee, Professor Itse Sagay, also added that Nigeria needs an upright judiciary without which the nation’s democracy would collapse.

The sudden raid of the houses of some judges by the DSS and the subsequent arrest of the judicial officers drew a plethora of reactions recently.

But Professor Sagay described the anti-corruption campaign of the President as right, while describing the criticism from Nigerians as totally wrong and shocking.

“We need the judiciary but we need an upright judiciary. Without that, one arm of government will collapse and democracy will collapse.

“Let us think of the implication of what is going on. If we don’t put the judiciary right or have a judiciary in which we have confidence, with integrity and honour, with moral authority, then we have no government and we have no democracy,” he said.

•Text courtesy of Channels TV. Photo shows committee chairman, Prof. Itse Sagay.

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