Amaechi Tasks Public Officers On Probity

Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has charged public officers to demonstrate high standard of probity and accountability in the conduct of government business.

Governor Amaechi gave this charge last Thursday during the Code of Conduct Bureau compliance training programme for Chief Executives and Heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA’s).

Represented by his deputy, Engr. Tele Ikuru, the State Chief Executive urged the participants to show

commitment in implementing the lessons from the training programme into our national life.

Decrying the damage that corruption and lack of public probity and accountability have caused the nation, Governor Amaechi said that now is the time for public officers to apply probity in public office adding that the issue of probity is critical in determining the progress or retrogression of Nigeria.

He however expressed optimism that the nation would experience paradigm shift in probity and accountability in public service delivery as the participants at the workshop were made up of public policy formulators and implementers expected to drive the machinery of public service in the nation.

In his keynote address, the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mohammed Uwais explained that the integration of the Code of Conduct Law for public officers into the nation’s constitution makes it a supreme law. He said that by 1979, the law was made because the public service was “plagued by corruption, embezzlement, nepotism, membership of secret societies and so forth and that the code was intended to stamp out those practices”.

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Mr. Sam Saba noted that the training programme had become necessary to bring the .import of the constitutional mandate, powers and functions of the Bureau to lime light, considering that most Nigerians had undermined the Code of Conduct Law for years.