By Philomina Attah
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) on Thursday said that it recovered N77.04 billion worth of stolen assets in 2019.
Mrs Rasheedat Okoduwa, spokesperson for the commission disclosed this while briefing newsmen on the activities and achievements of the commission in the year under review.
Okoduwa said that the total recovery, both in cash and fixed assets, was made through operations, interim and final forfeitures.
She gave the breakdown of the figure as N32.038 billion worth of land, buildings and vehicles; N767 million from project tracking, and N41.98 billion from frivolous personnel expenditure of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
She said that a total of N1.097 billion was recovered from completed projects on return of contractors to site, while N1.16 billion was in the Single Treasury Account.
Okoduwa also said that ICPC received a total of 1,934 petitions out of which 580 were investigated and concluded in the year under review.
She added that 83 cases were filed in court while the Commission secured 25 convictions.
“You may probably be wondering the differences on petitions received from cases filed in court.
“The issue is that, all petitions that comes to ICPC are registered, captured and that’s what came about the 1,934 figures.
“We later discovered that quiet a good number of the petitions received doesn’t belong to ICPC jurisdiction. Or sometimes, we discovered that the petitions will be better handle by other agencies.
“So, we advised them to take it to the appropriate place because this is not for us.
“Several of the petitions have to be sent to the relevant required agencies that is why you have the large disparity between the received and achieved figures,” she said.
Okoduwa disclosed that the National Anti-Corruption Volunteer Corps (NAVC) of the ICPC was suspended due to abuse by certain state chapters, which are being investigated.
She said the programme was in six state chapters and had 1,826 volunteers on it.
She added that the commission had decided to put the programme on hold for now until “we re-engineer to know what best way to move forward”.