By Ben Agande

ABUJA— Chairman, Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, Mr. Ekpo Nta, has identified interference by political leaders in states in court cases being prosecuted by the commission as one of the challenges facing anti-graft agency.

He spoke, weekend, when he hosted a team of  anti-corruption commission of Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, which paid him a courtesy visit.

According to the ICPC boss, “the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000 restricted the commission to charging its cases in state high courts. This is a setback to the anti-corruption fight because it often leads to political interference by sympathizers of the accused persons in their home states.”

He also identified inadequate funding as another hindrance to effective anti-corruption fight.

While canvassing preventive measures as a more effective way of checking corruption, the ICPC boss stated that if the institutions were working the way they should, “the huge sums we hear that have been stolen from government coffers would not have happened.”

He explained that instead of expending energy, time and other resources on investigative activities and the prosecution of corrupt individuals, it was better to design systems that would prevent corruption.

He noted that most of the issues tagged as corruption were actually system defects, noting that the ICPC had been involved in systems study and review in order to correct anomalies in government institutions.