Abuja — Senate has begun the process of amendment of the country's anti-graft laws to provide life jail terms for all persons found guilty of corruption charges.

A bill to this effect now before the Senate is to enact 'An Act to Provide for the Imposition of Special Punishment on Persons found Guilty of Economic Sabotage and other Matters Connected Therewith'.

Sponsored by Chairman of the Federal Character and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Smart Adeyemi, the bill scaled the First Reading in the Senate last Thursday.

Explaining the rationale for the bill, Adeyemi, a former National President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), said it is radically different from extant laws on corruption.

According to the bill, persons so convicted would spend the first five years of their jail term at a mechanised farmland of the Nigerian Prison Service (NPS) in the state where the offence is committed.

"Any person who fraudulently diverts any public fund amounting to five million naira or more being the property of the Federal Government of Nigeria or of a state or local government in Nigeria into his private account shall be guilty of economic sabotage.

"Any person who receives any payment or revenue amounting to five million naira or more on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria or of a state or local government and intentionally refuses to pay such fund into the appropriate government account shall be guilty of economic sabotage."

The bill also seeks to empower the Attorney General of the Federation or that of the state government to constitute a special panel made up of a legal practitioner, a reputable member of NUJ, a police officer not below the rank of a Chief Superintended of Police, a senior counsel in the ministry of justice and a person of unquestionable integrity from a reputable civil society group, which will investigate such allegation upon which the Attorney General will prefer criminal charges against such a person.