Public Complaints Commission set to initiate independent investigations in Rivers

Public Complaints Commission (PCC) says it is set to initiate independent investigations in Rivers State to redress injustices.

The new commissioner, Paul Worika, told newsmen in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, that only a society with guaranteed social justice would remain stable and progressive.

Worika, a former editor with the Rivers State-owned Tide newspaper, said when he led a team to the Federated Correspondents Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) that the 40-year-old commission had already swung into action by resolving some crisis between workers and their employers.

He said the PCC was a product of the Jerome Udoji panel set up much later (under Olusegun Obasanjo’s military reign) to help redress injustices and complaints in the workplace.

He made it clear that the PCC had the mandate to investigate cases in all institutions both in the public sector and in incorporated entities in Nigeria, but said such cases must not be already in court, criminal in nature, or be under discussion in the parliament.

Worika noted that the PCC, which was under the presidency has now been transferred to the National Assembly so as to deepen the democratic process and broaden the rights of the civilians. He mentioned the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency as two of the four agencies set up at the same time with the PCC.

The commissioner said the PCC was not only relevant but useful and that was why it had not been scrapped, though he admitted that the agency seemed not easily known in Rivers State.

Mentioning handicaps, Worika said most persons do not know that they had a right to bring their matters to the PCC, and that most persons still believed in the use of force instead of resort to civil proceedings. He also talked about ignorance on the side of those who pay lawyers to write to the PCC when the services were free and about those who were too poor to take up their matters.

Henceforth, he said, the PCC in Rivers State would be proactive and initiate investigations and encourage the masses to bring up their cases so as to avoid violence.