Senator Smart Adeyemi (PDP-Kogi) has called for the establishment of a
new anti-corruption agency to monitor the financial activities of political
office holders across the country.

Adeyemi, who made the call in an interview with newsmen,
noted that “corruption is the key problem in the sense that in Nigeria there’s
a kind of institutionalised corruption in the system’’.

He said the persistent looting of state resources by
unscrupulous public officers made it difficult to solve the problem of
unemployment in the country.

The former NUJ national
president stressed the need for more
anti-graft agencies to combat the widespread corruption in every sector of the
Nigerian society.

“We probably need another agency to take care of
political office holders and you monitor their standard of living, you monitor
what they have in the banks and you monitor their activities.

“When I say politicians, I mean politicians across the
country. From the federal legislators to the state legislators, to the
governors, to the presidency and to everybody.

“So, let there be an agency that will be independent of
the politicians themselves.

“We still need stiffer penalties to be put against
corruption in Nigeria. And I secondly believe that we need more than two
agencies to combat corruption. We need more than the EFCC and the ICPC,’’ he
said.

Adeyemi, who chairs the Senate Committee on FCT, also
condemned the high level of corruption in the public service of the federation.

He urged the government to carry out a massive
restructuring of the federal civil service to weed out corrupt civil servants
from the system.