By Joel Oladele
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has stated that it recovered, forfeited, and restrained assets valued at over N454bn from corrupt persons in the past four years.
This was revealed in a presentation by Mr. Jude Okoye, Deputy Director, Planning Research and Statistics, ICPC titled, “Overview of ICPC Achievements from 2019- March 2023” during the recently concluded two-day capacity-building training for reporters covering the activities of the Commission.
Giving a breakdown of the recoveries, the Deputy Director said that out of the N454.808bn, N257.492bn was fund restrained by ICPC through system studies of government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) while N3.540bn was recovered through tax intervention.
Mr. Okoye listed other recoveries to include plots of land and completed buildings; vehicles; cash recovered from domiciliary accounts; rents received from properties forfeited to the government; assets and jewelry valued at N25.361bn, N577.98m, N1.199bn, N25.73m, and N14.83m respectively.
According to him, the Commission “restrained N250.49m and N110.36m through Final Forfeiture and Interim Forfeiture Order; N26.573bn cash through budget tracking and N1.525bn cash in other accounts.”
Apart from the recoveries, other achievements of the Commission highlighted in the report included 4,737 investigations; 90 convictions; 3,422 projects tracked under Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Initiative (CEPTI).
Other achievements are the assessment of 1,463 MDAs on the Ethics and Integrity Compliance Scorecard; the review of 426 MDAs on Personnel cost; the review of 365 MDAs on Open Portal for Compliance with GIFMIS & TSA; inauguration of 265 ACTUs; 12,569,968 website hits and social media feedback; production and airing of 512 episodes of Corruption Must Go, while 3,012 sensitisation sessions were conducted.