Lagos:  The National Assembly has failed to amend a law that will make the fight against corruption more effective because "you don't just get a bill and pass it overnight," the secretary of the Senate committee on drugs, narcotics, and anti-corruption, Emmanuel Osuji, said yesterday at a press conference organised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) in Abuja.

Emmanuel Ayoola, the chairman of the ICPC, had last month complained that the non-passage of the amendments, three years after presentation to the Assembly, was hampering the ability of his commission to function. "The National Assembly has been dealing with the amendment of the ICPC act, in which is put an express provision permitting us to be proactive," Mr Ayoola said.

"That has been on for the past three years. We've gone for public hearings in the Senate; we've gone for public hearings in the House; we've submitted our memorandum, but up till now, the amendment has not been passed." Mr Osuji, who is the secretary to the committee and who represented it at the conference, however, exonerated the legislators from any wrongdoing.

"The major work has been done. There are so many bills in the National Assembly. What is remaining now is the third reading of the bill and then possible passage. You don't just get a bill and pass it overnight," Mr Osuji said.

He also defended the absence of members of the committee at the press conference which was to herald the 2010 edition of the annual national conference of anti-corruption committees in Nigerian Legislatures and Heads of Anti-Corruption Units in Government Establishments. "They (the senators) are on recess and most of them have travelled out of the country," he said.

The House of Representatives' committee on anti-corruption was also not represented at the press conference, an issue the ICPC says it is not to blame for. "I got in touch with the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on anti-corruption. He told me he was already in Egypt and that a member of his committee, C. O Ojelabi, would be here with us. He ought to be here with us," said Mohammed Bala, an ICPC staff and chairman of the joint planning commission of the conference.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate are on recess.

The conference, which has the theme, ‘The Imperative of Self Transformation and Knowledge Acquisition in the Fight Against Corruption' is expected to hold in Ogun, Nassarawa, Gombe, Kebbi, Rivers, and Anambra States. Apart from National Assembly members, other participants expected at the conferences include: state and local government legislators from the 36 states of the federation.

*  By Idris Akinbajo