The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has assured that it would support funding for the implementation of national anti-corruption strategy in the country.
The Director of the CDD, Ms. Idayat Hassan, gave the pledge on Thursday in Abuja at the third “High Level Strategic Session/Policy Roundtable on the Roles of Stakeholders in the Implementation of National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) in Nigeria,” organised by the CDD and Trust Africa.
Hassan, represented by the Senior Programme Officer, Managing Anti-corruption, Mr. Lukman Adefolahan, said the motivation for organizing the event was to bring stakeholders together to deliberate on implementing the anti-corruption strategy.
Adefolahan said that the strategy had five pillars, with different government agencies to lead the implementation, saying the National Orientation Agency (NOA) is expected to handle the reorientation and ethical values strategy as an example.
He said that on prevention of corruption, the ICPC was expected to lead since its core mandate was on prevention while the assets recovery component would be co-anchored by the major anti-corruption agencies.
“The challenge had always been funding for the implementation of the strategy and the CDD has made available some resources for the secretariat and other anti-corruption agencies to see how they could move on with the implementation,” he said.
On her part, the Head, Legal Department Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP), Mrs. Amaka Obinna, said corruption was fuelled by dearth in ethical and moral values in the country.
She said that a lot of corruption cases happened through procurement process, noting that this was fuelled by lack of morals and ethics.
“What we need now is orientation at all levels especially for the next generation so they can change their mindset about corruption.
“This is necessary because even though we fight corruption and recover all the money, if the next generation does not have a good mindset, the society will remain the same,” Obinna said.
The Head, Technical Unit on Governance and Anti-Corruption Reforms (TUGAR), Ms. Lilian Ekeanyanwu, said the unit alongside other anti-corruption agencies developed the NACS.
She said that currently, the onus was on the implementation of the strategy and that the monitoring and evaluation was also ongoing and periodically.
Also, the Executive Secretary, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Sadiq Radda, said that the anti-corruption fight was one that had to be won with a strategy, hence the initiation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS).
Prof. Radda said that NACS was the government’s initiative to establish national consensus on how to tackle corruption across board.
He therefore urged all the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and other stakeholders to key into it and undertakes the action plan to fight corruption for holistic implementation.
