The Centre for Fiscal Transparency and Integrity Watch (CeFTIW) on Tuesday called for more stakeholders’ actions to ensure the implementation of National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) framework.
The Executive Director of the Centre, Yakubu Umar made the call while presenting the report of research on the implementation of NACS 2017-2021, done in collaboration with the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes.
The report was presented at a one-day roundtable of the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee to review and track progress made by Anti-Corruption and Transparency Units (ACTUs) in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
Umar said that NACS was founded on five pillars of prevention, public engagement, ethical re-orientation, law enforcement and sanctions, as well as recovery of proceeds of crimes.
He said that NACS had witnessed a major setback due to the non-formation and inauguration of the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) as provided for in the NACS document.
“Inter-Agency rivalry and supremacy battles also undermined effective implementation, working against cooperation, information and intelligence sharing, effectiveness of operational platforms and coordination of the anti-graft war,” Umar said.
He pointed out that lack of adequate knowledge and misinformation by most agencies on their expectations in the implementation of the NACS policy, was a drawback.
The Anti Corruption Manager of the Rule of Law and Anti-corruption (RoLAC), Emmanuel Uche, also stressed the need for the fight against corruption to go beyond just the president’s body language into a collective fight of all stakeholders and citizens.
Uche called for a harmonised approach to the fight against corruption, especially the need for NACS to cascade down to more states of the federation.
He pointed out that NACS implementation at the federal level was only a fraction of the deep-rooted problem of corruption nationwide.
The Director, Asset Recovery, Ministry of Justice, Hajia Ladidi Mohammed while acknowledging the contributions of stakeholders to the production of the NACS document, urged ACTUs to do more across MDAs in driving the implementation of the strategy.
Mohammed said that creative ways of pushing the campaigns should be evolved by ACTUs so that the entire public service could be carried along in the fight against corruption.
In their assessment of NACS implementation by ACTUs in MDAs, the Monitoring and Evaluation (M & E) committee reported that awareness and knowledge of the NACS in MDAs were low.
While it attributed the lack of awareness to poor funding, the roundtable was urged to take ownership of the campaign as a service to the nation.
The committee called for partnership and better coordination, as well as specialised training for ACTUs.
It noted that support was required from the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning as well as the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) to ensure budget lines were created for anti-corruption activities.
Stakeholders were enjoined to do more on publicity and enlightenment by organising workshops and campaigns to intimate workforce in their organisations on the NACS.
Also, MDAs whose website were not functional were urged to approach the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy for IT support, to widely publicise the NACS document and its implementation.
On their part, Civil Society Organisations were encouraged to drive the implementation of the campaign through advocacies and provision of continuous trainings and support to ACTUs, ACAs and other stakeholders for the implementation of the strategy.
