The arraignments of some ex-governors in courts by the anti-corruption agencies for various economic crimes such as looting of state treasuries and money laundering is, to say the least, a national embarrassment.

These leaders betrayed people’s trust and allowed greed to control their sense of patriotism. It is no secret that many of them received more than N200 billions as statutory allocations but there was little impact in terms of physical developments in their states. Their corrupt acts not only deprived their state of the needed infrastructure, but also reduced their people to wallow in abject poverty. These were perpetrated under the protective shield of immunity clause. The immunity clause, as provided in section 308 of the 1999 constitution, protects the president, vice president, state governors and their deputies from prosecution while in office.

Since the restoration of democracy in 1999 it was discovered those it protects grossly abused this section 308 of the constitution. Debate in the last eight years hammered on expunging the controversial section 308 from the constitution. The argument was if you cannot prosecute a governor who commits economic crimes while in office how can you prosecute him when he leaves office after all the crimes were committed while he was under the protection of the constitution.

It is in the light of the above controversy generated by the immunity clause that President Umaru Musa Yar’adua took a bold step last week when he threw his weight for the removal of the immunity clause from the 1999 constitution.

The pronouncement was made during a dinner hosted by the Partnership Against Corruption Initiative in Davos, Switzerland where he was attending the annual meeting of the world economic forum.

According to the president, the removal of the immunity clause from the constitution would greatly facilitate the work of Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies, which he said have been granted total and complete independence of action by his administration.

The president’s statement sound as a sweet song to all well meaning Nigerians considering the devastating blow dealt the nation’s quest for development by corruption. The continued threat pose by corruption has gone beyond alarming level as it has created economic ineptitude, which has kept majority of Nigerians under poverty. Many of these people lack access to clean water, effective health care, functional education, stable electricity, gainful employment and a host of many social facilities. The sad commentary of our present situation is that the riches of the country benefit an insignificant minority segment of the people at the expense of the majority.

The desire of every responsible leader and citizen in this country is to see to the upliftment of the standard of living of the people. And there are good people bent on doing that. In view of this therefore the clamour to find an effective way to fight corruption both at the top and lower levels of our society is paramount.

Happily, President Yar’adua has indicated his determination to do that when he said his administration would implement other measures to ensure that opportunities to commit corruption are reduced to the barest minimum so that anybody, any public official who commits an act of corruption will know he has done it as a deliberate attempt, not because he has an opportunity to commit corruption.