Nigeria is almost overwhelmed by corruption, says ICPC
A report of a pilot survey of 2020 Nigeria Corruption Index released by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), has shown the country as highly corrupt with 48 percent rating.
Sadly, the report described the Justice Sector Monetary Corruption score as absolutely corrupt. Judiciary ought punish offenders but the rating for the Justice Sector Non-monetary corruption and the Justice Sector overall Corruption score are put as highly corrupt .
The report placed the Executive Sector Monetary Corruption score as moderately corrupt while Executive Non-Monetary Corruption and Executive Sector overall Corruption as highly corrupt.
The Nigeria Corruption Index report also placed Legislative Sector NonMonetary corruption and Legislative Sector overall corruption as highly corrupt .
The report however shows that the Legislative Sector corruption is moderately corrupt. Speaking about the challenges posed by corruption at round-table meeting on “National Ethics and Integrity “ with media owners and executives in Abuja on Tuesday, the Chairman Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Prof. Bolaji Olufunmileyi Owasanoye said the country is almost overwhelm by corruption.
He said that even as the anti corruption agencies battle with corruption and its vices, about 2/3 of petitions received by the Commission are lacked of facts that would support prosecution of offenders while several others petitions are simply civil matters but painted by petitioner lawyers as if they are criminally induced corruption cases.
The Chairman assured that ICPC is diligently pursuing it mandates of receiving petitions, investigation and prosecution of offenders.
It is also pushing measures to prevent corruption by conducting system studies and reviews of the working of Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government.
According to him, over 250 out of 350 departments and agencies of government have responded to questionnaires from the Commission that would be used to prevent financial linkages.
He said that Commission is investigating several aspect of public expenditures including constituency projects of National Assembly members some of which are located in remote areas.
He debunked the insinuation that the Commission is focusing only on the senators.
He said the commission is first focusing on projects whose value are above N100m.
He said that the Commission dropped it’s investigation into bail out funds that were given to the state government because at that time it was not proper for it to embark on the investigation, just like any media house will reach a decision to drop a story is not sure of.
Prof. Owasanoye admitted the Commission is faced with challenges of personnel, timely release of budgetary allocation, staffs integrity ,capacity gap and in some occasions lack of public empathy among others.
Fielding questions on recovered assets disposal the Chairman clarified that the Commission has the power to return recovered assets from agencies to the agencies where the assets were stolen.
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He said that ICPC has about N1,2bn cash recoveries and close to N2bn cash belonging some agencies and departments.
Stating that many of the federal government agencies have strong anti corruption power of regulation, the Chairman said that the missing link has been coordination.
He commended the effort of Attorney General and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami SAN who recently created a joint committee to depose all recovered assets. He said the work of that committee would leave the agencies to face their core mandates.
