The Lagos State House of Assembly says establishment of the state anti-corruption commission is not meant to impair the objectives of national anti-graft body, EFCC.

Victor Akande, chairman of the Assembly’s committee on Judiciary, Human Rights, Public Petitions & LASIEC made the clarification on Wednesday.

“Whatever we have done is not against what the EFCC is doing. We are only making laws for Lagos State, there is no bad blood in that,” the lawmaker said.

Arguing further, Mr Akande said “The question is do we have the power to make laws to look into the finances of Lagos State? If the answer is yes, then there is no problem. We are in tandem with what we have the power to do as enshrined in the constitution, so we have not gone out of the constitution to make any law.”

The Assembly held a one-day stakeholder parley at the Assembly complex, on a bill for “A Law To Amend The Lagos State Public Complaints And Anti-Corruption Commission Law, 2021.”

Mr Victor Akande stressed that the Assembly was committed to ensuring that the state’s anti-corruption commission is given the necessary legal backing.

“Some of the sections needed to be redrafted just to give the bill a human face, and this has been done.

“We also discovered that we didn’t take the import of these, while working on the bill.

“Some of the sections are already embedded in the constitution or in the administration of Criminal Justice 2015 law.

“So by the time we went over it again, we saw that some of the things that were embedded in all these statutes books supposed to be removed.

“My committee had look at the amendment critically and we have done a lot of justice to it, but we still need the stakeholders to come and clarify some issues so that we will be on the same page and come out with a robust law.

“We are doing this to bring sanctity and sanity into the way we run things in Lagos State,” he said.