Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, on Sunday, urged the Code of Conduct Bureau to probe the conduct of some members of the Senate who are allegedly involved in the removal of the provisions on real-time transmission of election results from the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.
The lawmakers allegedly removed the provisions during plenary after the majority of the senators had voted for the inclusion of the provisions and without any debate on the proposed removal of the said provisions.
SERAP requested the probe of the Senate in a petition by its Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, and sent to the Chairman, Code of Conduct Bureau, Abdullahi Usman Bello.
It asked the CCB to promptly and effectively investigate the conduct of any member of the National Assembly and officer of the executive branch, who allegedly altered the Tax Reform Bills which resulted in the reported discrepancies between the harmonised versions of the tax reform bills passed by the National Assembly and the copies signed into law and gazetted by the Federal Government.”
According to SERAP, there are also issues of conflict of interest, abuse of office, non-disclosure of interests, lack of due process, and erosion of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers in the exercise of legislative power.
It stated that the petition is submitted pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 9 of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers contained in the Fifth Schedule, Part 1 to the Nigerian Constitution 1999 (as amended) and sections 5 and 13 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act.
The statement further partly read, “Where lawmaking is shaped by abuse of office and conflict of interest, it ceases to be a legitimate exercise of constitutional and fiduciary responsibility and becomes a legal and ethical infraction prohibited under the Code of Conduct for Public Officers.”
