Tuesday, 16 December 2014

COMBATING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRIME AND CORRUPTION-Odunze Reginald



                  Images credited to Forbes
When Isaac Newton, the powerful scientist who enunciated the Newton’s Laws of motion lost his fortune in the South Sea Bubble Company of 1720 due to corruption. He said  and I quote  “I  can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies but not the madness of men”. Today in my people there is madness, everyone is thinking of getting rich quick. ( Kiyosaki 1990:70)
And according to Ojo (2009:11) in an article captioned, “Reps set to pass cyber crime bill, he stated that corruption has grown so wide to include advance fee fraud, password sniffing, hacking, web cramming, credit card fraud, identity theft , data kidnapping, software piracy, cyber squatting, unlawful interceptions etc”
The preamble to the 2003 United Nations against corruption (UNCAC), which Nigeria has ratified states that corruption “is no longer a local matter but a transnational phenomenon that affects all societies and economies. The African convention on preventing and combating corruption which Nigeria has ratified acknowledged the need for international co-operation to combat corruption and note the corrosive effect on individual and society” Falana 2008:120.
The world is a global village ,what affects economy in our society will definitely affect other economies and countries.
Continuing Falana stated that the ground corruption exacerbates scarcity of fund in Nigeria, frustrating any interest in enriching quality and life, Nigerian leaders must accept responsibility for the continued poverty in the country, he noted that ground and blatant corruption degrades life, he went further to say that in 2006 the Commonwealth working group on assets repatriation specifically refers to corruption being defined as  an international crime  and suggest that jurisdiction of the international court be extended beyond the prosecution of crimes against  humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Roman Statutes. Falana further  stated that the early draft of the statute did in fact include  reference to crimes other than crime against humanity such as Terrorism and Drug Trafficking.
Corruption has reached an alarming rate globally, and do we continue to fold our hands and watch corruption kill our great economy, the answer is an emphatic No.  It could be observed that most people who involved in corruption often end in poverty so also for a country. And as Prof Pat Utomi 2008 in “The Limit of lets share Economy, he stated that like people who won lottery, they often return to poverty.

Odunze Reginald

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